In the past month or so all my work has been focussed on the planning and preparation of September's timetable of classes within the libraries. This has involved a noteable success with the award of ILA provider status meaning that we can now create our own classes and allow people of lower incomes to gain funding to pay for these. This is a real success for the libarary and the challenge now is creating them. As we must start small and build up the recieved funds I have decided to take some initial classes. This will begin with a 4 week class that is free for way of a trial followed by a longer one that is ILA funded. The creation of courses is fun and have enjoyed it although I am nervous about the actual teaching and also whether I know enough!

Thankfully, we have input from local providers meaning we still have a strong timetable, this allows me to gradually reduce this and increase our own learning and I am lucky to have this opportunity. This involved a lot of negotiation and planning meetings and I feel my skills within these are improving.

I have also spent a great deal of time updating the library website, I feel this is an important area of any librray service now and slthough my authorities website isn't aesthetically ideal at least I have some new skills in designing pages etc (although not using html!)

Other than taht this month also saw a rewarding visit to the CILIP Scotland conference in Peebles, among other speakers my favourite talk covered Family History and really inspired me to develop a project when I returned. I am currently looking into a variety of funding initiatives to try and get this arranged.