New initiative for the county libraries

DO YOU enjoy going to your local Library?

Have you not been before?

Either way, they would be really delighted to see you, as, over the next 12 months, all the 39 Libraries in Gloucestershire are competing for The David Vaisey Prize, which will be given to the four which have done the most to highlight the power of reading and encourage people of all ages to talk about or read more books.

The prize aims to encourage more volunteering within libraries, particularly to help out with the initiatives that will be put on in communities as part of this prize.

The Prize is named after David Vaisey CBE, who was the head of The Bodleian Library in Oxford and the University's libraries.

He is the son of a Gloucestershire agricultural worker who won scholarships to Rendcomb College and Exeter College, Oxford.

The idea is the brainchild of three [local] [Gloucestershire] people — Sir Michael McWilliam of Brimpsfield, Jonathan Taylor of Tarlton and Martin Lee-Browne of Fairford, who formed The David Vaisey Trust to put it into practice.

They have been joined by Sue Empson of Cirencester, and two professionals in the field — Antonia Byatt, who is the Director of The Cheltenham Literature Festival, and Jane Everiss, the Head of Gloucestershire Library Services.

At the launch of the Prize, Jane Everiss said: "We are pleased to work closely with the Trust to encourage initiatives in libraries where reading has a real impact on people's lives. We are equally pleased that we can recognise the invaluable contribution that volunteers make to our libraries."

Substantial financial support has been given by The Booker Prize Foundation, The Ernest Cook Trust of Fairford and family trusts in the county, The Bodleian Library and the charitable trust of The Honourable Company of Gloucestershire.

Individual donors, some of whom have strong Gloucestershire connections, include the novelist Jilly Cooper, Harvey and Alison McGrath, and the author Alan Bennett — who has said: "Both as a facility where one finds and borrows books in whatever form, and also as a place - ideally a quiet place - in which one enjoys reading, libraries are for all ages. It is how my reading began and how my friend David Vaisey's did too. The David Vaisey Prize is well named, celebrating as it does a life dedicated to libraries."

The first prize will be £5,000 for the winning Library, with £1,000 for each of the three runners-up.

The prize money will be for the libraries to use as they decide for building on what they have already achieved.

Cllr Andrew Gravells, cabinet member for libraries at Gloucestershire County Council, said: "I am really pleased to see this amazing support and interest for libraries across the county from the people who have set up the David Vaisey Awards. This is a fantastic further incentive for libraries to continue the great work they do and with the summer reading challenge just about to start, and I hope people will drop into their local library and see what they have to offer.”

An independent panel of judges will decide the winners, and the first prize-giving by a celebrity will be at one of the events during the 2017 Cheltenham Literary Festival, to which everyone involved with the chosen Libraries will be invited.