NESCol Library awarded funding for community building events
April 12, 2021
North East Scotland College’s Library+ has been awarded funding for a project that will help to build a community across its campuses among students and staff.
The £3600 from the Scottish Library Information Council (SILC)’s Innovation and Development Fund will be used for the ‘Stories, Crafting, Creative, Adventures’ project, which will be run by Information Services Manager Jill Reid.
The project will see staff and students from across the College meet virtually once a month to take part in conversations with Scottish authors, crafting sessions, creative writing, book discussions and guest speaker events.
It was inspired by the challenges of remote learning, working and teaching, and aims to increase the feeling of a College community in a virtual world.
Jill explains, “While some students and staff have adapted well to online teaching and learning, there is increased isolation among many. I believe this project will reduce this isolation, and bring staff and students from all three campuses together – making them feel part of a community.”
Jill also hopes that ‘Stories, Crafting, Creative, Adventures’ will also increase the use of the College’s Library services for pleasure and wellbeing, alongside academic reading and study:
“The libraries at NESCol have always been traditional Further Education academic space. Whilst there is a small fiction section it is not well used, especially for reading for pleasure. There is so much potential for our service to become a space for fun as well as academia, and I hope this project can help us to reach that potential.”
The group will begin meeting in April, and planned events will run until March 2022. Staff and students from across the College will be welcome to join, and recruitment for the sessions will begin next week.
Pamela Tulloch, chief-executive officer at SLIC, said the additional funding will give libraries a much needed boost to implement innovation and creativity in the delivery of their services as they emerge from the pandemic.
She said: “It has been a particularly difficult year for libraries, and it was really important that this round of funding supports the transformation of services as they adapt to a new, virtual landscape and the transition out of lockdown.
“Library services have shown outstanding feats of ingenuity and resilience in the last year, and this year’s IDF applications have been highly reflective of that.”