Welcome to the mid-August 2026 update from the Leamington Library of Things.
Last month we said how well the Peace Festival had gone for us. On the first Saturday of September (the 5th) we will have a stand at the EcoFest too, so do come and talk to us there. Come and tell us how much you like the Library – we go on being told “what a great idea!” all the time – and give us your ideas for how we might extend our activities. Now we are established, we are keen to innovate.
It was great to be able to report back to the Warwickshire Councillors who had granted us some funds at the end of 2025 on how those funds had helped establish the Library and how well we feel it’s going; no blah, the plain truth.
That upward trend of more items being borrowed that we noted in last month’s newsletter has been complemented by some new volunteers, who are joining in the core activities and are also helping us with our main website, organising of the inventory, accounting, and developing processes and procedures. For all these good reasons our small space can feel a bit crowded, so please do go on being patient when we appear to be struggling or a bit overwhelmed – when people turn up to borrow items, or to return items they’ve borrowed, or just to ask us about the Library, or to offer us items for the Library, all at the same time as the volunteers are making themselves useful.
At the end of July we had a volunteers team meeting – we agreed to meet in the shade in the Pump Room Gardens, but chose the only chilly, windy afternoon! We had a colleague from the Oxford Library of Things to join us and help facilitate us, and – once we’d finished the picnic – we assessed our progress over the first half-year since we began operating in earnest. By then we had 201people who had joined the Library, and had 308 items on the inventory, of which 90 had been borrowed, for a total of over 180 loans. Takings from the loans had been steadily rising too, with a slight levelling off only in April/May, but all in all very encouraging. And we talked about some ideas for the future…
We have recently had an influx of new items donated to the Library. All very welcome but it does mean that we have fallen a bit behind in adding them onto the inventory; it’s a Sisyphean task. So please be patient and never be afraid to ask if we have something that you can’t find on the inventory, it might just be waiting to get there.
We were interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s ‘You and Yours’ programme, which went out this week https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/
Thank you for your interest in the Leamington Library of Things. Keep borrowing and telling other people about us; word of mouth is our best friend.
With best wishes / Maurice
