News

Sherburn & Villages Community Library
Our big activity is the Summer Reading Challenge where we are encouraging children to read. The theme for this year is Animal Agents. Please bring in your children and sign up for the challenge. It’s fun!
Do come into the library and see our facilities for yourself. Enjoy a cup of fresh bean coffee and browse the newspapers. If you need help with your computer, tablet or phone or don’t know how to print the boarding card for your holiday, come and see one of our IT buddies who will be pleased to assist you.
The volunteers are enjoying their work at the Library. If you would like to join them, we are always interested in new applicants. If we get enough, we can consider extending the opening hours. Please get in contact on sherburncommunitylibrary@gmail.com
The Old Girls’ School
Plans are progressing for the refurbishment of the Old Girls’ School. We are currently obtaining quotations for the refurbishment works. Once we have these we will be able to complete our Big Lottery Fund application for the funds.
You will all be able to see the progress we are making on the community garden which was funded by the Tesco Bags for Life grant. Contractors are currently on site and we will have the garden open for the Craft and Food Fair, so please come and visit us and we can show you our progress to date. We would also be interested in visits from any potential users of the facility as it is a community building, so your input is vital. You can see from our new logo that we are going to call the place the Old Girls’ School Community Centre and Tearooms.
The opening of the nursery at the back of the school will be in early September. This building is for Kirkgate Child Care. To find out more, come to one of the open days in August.
Please don’t forget to help us fund the community cinema by choosing the Old Girls’ School as you’re your charity for the 1% community grant available from the Co-op. We only have until 9th October to raise sufficient money. The pot is currently sitting at £567.

Sherburn & Villages Community Library

Another month under our belts as volunteers and we are still learning!

Our new coffee machine has been installed and we have received positive feedback on the improvement in quality. We have also increased the range of drinks with decaffeinated coffee and herbal teas now on offer. We have changed the biscuits and reduced the price to 50p per packet. Don’t forget for regular users there are loyalty cards for the coffee – buy 6 get your 7th free.

We are going to install a new noticeboard at the entrance to the Library to provide residents with information on news and events around Sherburn and the neighbouring villages. We want this to be updated at least daily and help to make the library a hub for local news.

Anne-Marie Oldroyd, the new Community Development Manager from the Parish Council, will be taking up her new role on 12th June and will be mainly based at the library.

A reminder that we have a newly decorated room upstairs which is available to hire out for meetings at a cost of £15 per session. A session is either a morning or an afternoon. Please book via the library.

Did you know you can now buy gifts in the library? We have a range of gift items for adults and children. The hand crafted items have been made locally. If you would like to support local crafters and the community library, please have a look in our display case.

Upcoming events in the Library

Wednesday 14th June – Discovering your Family History. This is a starter session to describe how you can start researching your own family history. The talk will be given by Pam Trace who has been running regular sessions on Family History at Sherburn Library for four years. Tickets £5

Saturday 17th June – Children’s Craft Event. Come and make Venetian masks. All materials supplied. Suitable for 7 years and upwards. Tickets £3.50 each or 2 for £5.

Digital Neighbours training 9th & 16th June

From July we will again have the Summer Reading Challenge for our younger readers. Volunteers are visiting the local schools to tell the children all about it. Registration starts on 15th July. The theme this year is animal agents.

The Old Girls’ School
The asbestos has been removed and we are now starting work on the toilets and flat roof.

Thanks to everyone who supported us at the Easter Parade and the Gala. We have raised a total of over £5,000 locally.

Work on the Nursery is also well underway. This will be opening in September as Kirkgate Childcare, offering places to children aged 2 to 5. For more information please contact Dawn Stevenson, Nursery Manager on 07922038597 or kirkgatechildcare@outlook.com.

The publicity about the Community Cinema had generated a huge amount of interest on social media. Please remember to register on line at the Co-op for this to be your preferred charity for the next 6 months, so we can maximise the 1% donation to local causes.

We need help from the community to make this fantastic old building into a community centre to meet the growing needs of our villages. If you are a local trades person who can offer to help with the refurbishment or you are willing to help with decorating or general volunteering, please get in touch with Allyson Chambers allysonchambers@aol.com or Tel 01977 681670

NEWSLETTER
April 2017
The Library
With Easter here we have two weeks as a Community Library under our belt. It’s been an interesting, often hectic, period as we put the theory of the training courses into practice.

It’s fair to say there have been lots of minor issues, but nothing major has gone wrong. We have begun work on creating crib sheets for all the key tasks (e.g. signing up a new borrower). None of us are working full-time at the Library, most of us are volunteering for one session per week and it will take a while for us to get up to speed, so having a quick reference for the key tasks will be useful.

The Steering Group had a meeting with the Team Leaders on the 11th April. Our Library Supervisor, Julie Lakin and our Outreach Librarian, Alison Tutill joined us and they both commented on the enthusiasm and commitment of the volunteers.

At that meeting we set up three Working Groups:-

Events – to manage and coordinate events within the Library.
Community Hub – we aim to make the Library a centre for community news and events and the natural choice for residents who want information about community facilities and council services.
Communications – developing a Public Relations strategy and a strategy for how we communicate with local residents. This will involve traditional media (parish newsletters etc) and also social media.
The IT Buddies are also meeting on a regular basis, with their first meeting being held on April 5th.

At the moment we have a limited number of names down for each group, but input is welcome from everyone and if you feel you could contribute to one of them then please email sherburncommunitylibrary@gmail.com.

There is also scope for other working groups, so any suggestions would be very welcome.

Lanyards, badges and name cards have now been supplied to most, but not all, volunteers. If one hasn’t reached you then please email sherburncommunitylibrary@gmail.com and we will sort something out.

Similarly you should now have received sign in details for the online training. We do appreciate the time volunteers have already given up for training, but this will add to your knowledge. The online training about Data Protection is particularly useful because we do see a fair amount of personal data at the library, so you might want to make that part a priority.

Staying on the data protection theme, the Acceptable Use forms are part of our Data Protection policy and we have had signed Acceptable Use forms from most volunteers, but if you haven’t yet signed one please see your Team Leader. You also need to have undergone Fire Safety Induction. If you have not yet done this, please see your Team Leader.

The Old Girls’ School

April 1st was an important date for the Old Girls’ School too, as it was the date that we take on the lease from NYCC. There is a lot of refurbishment to do to get the building open as a Community Centre, but the Friends of the Old School are working hard on their project plan.

We are also delighted that a project at the Old Girls’ School has been selected for the next 6 months for support at the Co-op. 1% of you shopping bill goes to local causes and every 6 months there are 3 projects. From 9th April the Old Girls’ School Community Cinema is one of the projects, so if you are a member, please make it your preferred charity. If you are not a member, it only costs £1 to join.

The Library

It is only weeks now until the Library becomes Sherburn & Villages Community Library. From 1st April it will be run by volunteers. Our aim is to make the change as seamless as possible for our customers and to continue to provide a friendly and helpful environment to enable people to access local services and use the library.

The only change to opening hours is to remove the later opening (between 5 and 6pm) on a Thursday. To confirm our opening hours from 1st April are:-

Monday 9.30am to 5pm
Tuesday 9.30am to 5pm
Wednesday—Closed all day
Thursday 9.30am to 5pm
Friday 9.30am to 1pm
Saturday 9.30am to 12.30 pm

We have a social evening for our volunteers on at the Library at 6.30pm on March 14th – enabling the teams to get to know each other.

We have been successful in securing funding from Stronger Communities for a grant for Digital Neighbours. This will be used to purchase some updated computers and e-readers to enable us to give more support for our IT buddies and to provide some classes to help residents improve their computer skills.

The Old Girls’ School

We are still hoping to take on the lease from 1st April. We are actively seeking quotations and funding for the work which needs to be carried out.

We have received some quotes for the Community Garden funded by the Tesco Bags for Life grant. The designs look very exciting and will transform the outside space.

We have been successful in obtaining a grant of £4,000 from the CEF towards the cost of the catering equipment required for the Community Café.

The Library

The first piece of good news is that we are all delighted after many years of lobbying NYCC, that at last the road surface in front of the Library has been put back to an acceptable standard. This has been a difficult issue as actually the road is owned by 9 different people, so NYCC have had to step in and cover the whole cost for now and hope they can recoup the various shares later. Well done NYCC for doing the right thing!

The imminent arrival of Sherburn & Villages Community Library on 1st April is starting to feel real, as we put in place the final plans to ensure we have a team of trained volunteers to run the Library.

The second training course has now completed and the next 4 courses all start from week commencing 27th February. By the end of March all of our volunteers will have received their initial training.

We have allocated all the volunteers to their shifts and appointed team leaders. We are meeting with the Team Leaders on 22nd February and there is a social event for all the volunteers on 14th March.

We are close to finalising the Lease and Service Level Agreement with North Yorkshire and everything is on track.

If anyone else would like to join our group of volunteers, you would be very welcome. Just get in touch at the Library or e-mail sherburncommunitylibrary@gmail.com.

The scheduling of the volunteers did highlight a problem with regard to staffing the long shift on a Thursday afternoon. Having reviewed the usage of the library during the period 5pm to 6pm, we have decided to close the Library at 5pm on a Thursday, in line with other afternoon opening. We appreciate that there is a need for evening opening to meet the requirements of working people who are not back in the village at 5pm. But, it has been found that the take-up for the hour from 5pm to 6pm is very low. If we are to have evening opening, it needs to be to a later time. We will review this decision once we are operational and have had a chance to thoroughly review the needs of library users.

The Old Girls’ School

We have now received the draft lease from NYCC and we are actively planning the project to take over the OGS as well as applying for funding.

The Library

We now have enough volunteers to confidently say we can staff the library from when we open on 1st April. However if anyone else would like to join us, you would be very welcome. Just get in touch at the Library or e-mail sherburncommunitylibrary@gmail.com. Training has started for the first set of volunteers. 12 keen volunteers have already learned about Customer Service, Events, Health & Safety and how to use the Self-Serve machine. This is from the first of 4 half day courses. We are arranging a social event for volunteers in March to allow everyone to get to know each other before we embark upon our exciting journey.

We have had a meeting with NYCC to discuss the alterations to the first floor which will need to take place to provide clear space for the Library and other users of the building. This is unlikely to happen until at least June or July. In addition to the Library we will have 3 rooms upstairs which we can use for the Community Hub or to rent out.

We are looking to strengthen our team of IT Buddies as a number of the volunteers are keen to use their IT skills to help the community. We are applying for a grant which would allow us to run short courses in the library to allow people to increase their confidence in accessing digital technologies such as internet shopping, applying for Road Fund Tax or TV Licence, saving money on energy, and accessing on-line support for CV writing.

We are investigating options for service of refreshments at the Library as we understand that users want to have a place to sit with a cup of coffee to read the paper or a book.

We have not yet finalised the lease or the service level agreement with NYCC but discussions are ongoing.

The Old Girls’ School

We are now looking at taking over the lease from 1st April. Obviously there is lots of work to do before we can open and we are looking at scheduling the programme of works. We would like the Old School to be open by the summer so the Craft & Food Festival which is being held over the August Bank Holiday weekend will have access to its much needed facilities.

We had some very successful fund raising at the end of last year. In the last 3 months alone we raised over £2,600. Thanks to everyone who has supported us through attending events or buying the Sherburn Calendar. We have some more plans for the spring, so watch this space.

The Library

We are continuing our recruitment process for volunteers to run the library from 1st April 17. There has been a very good response from the community and we will start our training from January.

The Community Library is still looking for residents who can spare a couple of hours each week or fortnight and who want to contribute to their community, make new friends and be at the centre of local events. If you think you might be able to help then information is available at the Library or you can email for information – sherburncommunitylibrary@gmail.com.

We are still in discussion with North Yorkshire County Council as to the exact areas of the building which we will be taking over but we hope to be able to finalise the lease in January.

We have visited all the Parish Councils whose residents use the Library and have been delighted by their support for the Community Library. Some even got their cheque books out straight away!

The Old Girl’s School

Excellent news from the application for the Tesco Bags of Help grant and the subsequent voting in the village. Our project to create a Community Garden was awarded the 1st prize with a grant of £12,000. Thanks to everyone who voted for us.

The Pamper Night in November was a success raising £267. The Calendars are selling like hot cakes and we have had to arrange for additional copies to be printed. Last few available at £5, either from the Library or Forget Me Not.

Our last fund raiser of the year is the Disco at the Social Club on December 9th. Please come and support us.