The Reader Online

• Job based in Liverpool/Wirral
• Full-time – but would consider part-time
• 1 year fixed term contract (£15,000 -£18,000 p.a. pro rata)

This is a dynamic and varied job requiring you to promote, set-up, establish and facilitate weekly Get Into Reading groups in order to promote well-being and good mental health for a range of community members in both Liverpool and Wirral.  Client groups include  Carers, people living in Care Homes, people with a range of physical or mental health problems, and members of the general population who might enjoy  shared reading.

Read more about the job role and how to apply on our website.

Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy is to join 21 other leading poets for a Poetry Live for Haiti.

Duffy, who was made poet laureate last year, told the BBC:

Like everyone else, I was very deeply affected by reports from Haiti about the earthquake and its aftermath, and I just thought to myself ‘this is going to take years to put right’. These people will need support for a long, long time to come.

Liverpool poet Roger McGough and recent contributer to The Reader magazine,  Andrew Motion, will be taking part, as well as Jo Shapcott, John Agard, Dannie Abse, Gillian Clarke and many others.

Poetry Live for Haiti will be held at Central Hall, Westminster on Saturday, from 2.30pm. It is hoped the event will raise £20,000 for the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

A commission to examine the future of school library provision in England is being launched by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) and the National Literacy Trust (NLT). The commission will be chaired by former secretary of state for education and skills Estelle Morris and will deliver its findings in June.

The Read to Lead team will be heading ‘Down Under’ to Melbourne, Australia, at the end of March to deliver a bespoke course at the State Library of Victoria. A group of 20 librarians and local partners will be trained to facilitate Get Into Reading groups, in what we hope will become a long-term international partnership with The Reader Organisation. The Reading Revolution really is going global!

A training commission from Melbourne is an indication of how the Read to Lead training is growing in both profile and confidence; with the strong possibility of a Danish Read to Lead course in the coming months we’re very much hoping that this is a sign of things to come.

For more information about Read to Lead training – wherever you are in the world(!) – please contact Mark Till.

He may not be able to read yet but eight hour old Charlie Harris could be entered into the Guinness Book of Records as the youngest person in the world to join a library.

Organisers are deciding whether to award him the title after he joined Halton Lea library at just eight hours old. There is currently no world record for the world’s youngest library member.

Charlie was born at Liverpool Women’s Hospital and one of his first visitors was his grandad, library janitor Noel Harris. Armed with a Bookstart pack to help him on his way Noel got his first grandchild signed up straight away.

Read more here.

Apparently today, known as Blue Monday (the third Monday in January), is the ‘worst day of the year’. Read more about the slightly sceptical mathematics behind this here if you’d like but whether you’re feeling blue, green, pink or any other sort of colour, here’s a ‘little’ story about a little library that is sure to make you smile:

A traditional red phone box has been recycled into one of the country’s smallest lending libraries – stocking 100 books.

Another thing that will make you feel better today? Share a favourite book or poem with someone you know: a friend, a relative, a colleague and talk about it… you’ll banish those blues in no time.

We can now confrim that ‘New Beginnings: Get Into Reading Conference, Supper and Readers’ Day’ will now be taking place on Friday 5^th and Saturday 6^th March at Blackburne House, Liverpool.

Full details can be found on our website. Delegates already booked to attend the conference will be contacted by the end of the week to have their registration at the rescheduled events confirmed.

Liverpool health report goes online

A new website has been launched to give Liverpool residents a say on the future of health and social care. The site, http://www.liverpoollink.org.uk goes live tomorrow and will give visitors the opportunity to comment on services.

They can also communicate directly with officials of the Liverpool Local Involvement Network (LINk), an independent network made up of local people and groups.

Liverpool LINk chair, Tim Oshinaike, said:

“We hope the new website will help get more people involved in our work as it gives residents an easy way to contact our team, find out any information, help with the work we do, and share views on health and social care in the city.”

£50m Central Library plan approved by Liverpool planners

The city centre will have a temporary library while the Central Library is closed for 2½ years for a £50m redevelopment.

Yesterday, the project passed a key milestone when the revamp was given planning permission and listed building consent by the city’s planning committee.

The library will close around June this year and re-open in 2012. We just hope that the temporary arrangements whilst the building is closed mean that the city’s main library has a presence and people are able to continue to read the library’s books.

Due to the current bad weather, which has meant many of our guests and speakers are unable to make it to Liverpool, and the prospect of more to come, the New Beginnings GIR Conference and Readers’ Day have been postponed.

The event will be rescheduled – will have a New Beginning, you might say – and more details will follow about this next week. Unfortunately we will not be able to offer refunds, but all tickets will be carried over to the new date. If you have already set off and are unable to return, please contact us immediately by phone on 0151 794 2830.

For now, however, please accept our apologies: no one is more disappointed than we are, but we have been advised that this is a non-essential event and that the responsible thing to do is to postpone.

If you need to cancel your hotel booking (and you made it online) please contact The Mersey Partnership Conference Bureau on +44 (0)151 237 3938 or email conferences@merseyside.org.uk (event code: TMPREADER10).

Clare Allan, author of Poppy Shakespeare and one of our guests for New Beginnings on Friday, has written about Get Into Reading in her column in the Guardian today.

As a child of academic parents, it would never have occurred to me that I needed permission to read any book (TV was a different matter), but the mental health system is packed with people who have suffered their whole lives from the failure of others to recognise and respond to them as thinking, feeling, intelligent human beings. Parents, teachers and society in general have repeatedly reinforced the message that the doors to the treasure house are barred to the likes of them. Unfortunately, much mental health treatment does little to challenge it.

Thankfully, there are signs that this is starting to change. David Fearnley, a forensic psychiatrist at Ashworth high security hospital on Merseyside, runs a Get Into Reading group with patients…

Read it in full here.