Today’s piece shares some of the learning and resources from the recent community engagement, volunteering and networking session in Sheffield plus links to free webinars and a face to face session in Northamptonshire.
- Twine Webinar – a free digital tool from Power to Change (31 May and 13 June). Click to watch a short video about Twine and how it can support your library.
- Good financial management Webinar (26 June with a second one in September)
- Fundraising and business plan session (face to face) at Rushden Hall in Northamptonshire (5 June).
Learning from the Community engagement, volunteering and networking session in Sheffield
On 30th April, two colleagues from the CML Peer Network (Peter Ranken from Archibald Corbett and Margaret Adjaye, Upper Norwood Library Hub) set off from London to Sheffield to meet Darrell Porter, Sheffield Libraries, Sean Kelly, Libraries Taskforce and other CML colleagues for the community engagement, volunteering and networking session.
Peter led a session covering the
- types of community managed libraries
- remarkable range of skills and contributions made by volunteers
- volunteer types, from trustees to librarians, activity volunteers, management etc
- how to engage (from our communities), recruit, manage, develop and retain volunteers
You can find slides from Peter’s session here – sheffield volunteers workshop 30 April 2019.
Peter also shared a copy of his library’s Volunteer Handbook and Sean took colleagues through some of the resources and toolkits on the Libraries Taskforce site.
Margaret then led a brief discussion on how to embed diversity and inclusion into volunteering and community engagement practices.
We then spent some time discussing and sharing our experiences on cyber security, books supply, safeguarding and DBS, code of conduct for volunteers and much more.
We agreed to host at least 4 – 5 networking events each year in various places and not just in London and Sheffield marked the beginning of a very informative and extremely useful learning and networking event.
If you would like to connect with us, or if you have any queries or want to know more about the Network and how we can support you, please contact us at communitylibs@unlt.org
Community Managed Libraries National Peer Network 