National Libraries Day in Scotland - the results!

Instead of having an event for National Libraries Day this year, GLTU (Glasgow Library Tweetups) decided to create a Twitter snapshot of Scottish libraries – what people use them for and why they value them. After much tweeting and retweeting, we got a great response. It’s obviously not comprehensive, but there’s a geographical spread from Orkney down to Dumfries and Galloway and representatives of public, academic, school and special libraries, so that’s pretty broad coverage. There are cute kids, a dog, a cat (cheated a bit on that one) and cake – what’s not to love? Head off to the Storify to see the full results – it’s too long to embed, but if you just have time to look at one part of it (it’s quite long), scroll down to Dundee Libraries and check what they did. It is truly awesome - here's a taster. And isn't this just what the day should be all about? Getting people to read.

National Libraries Day. What libraries can offer #14 Pull up a seat, get comfy & read. #nld #nldscot #nld13 twitter.com/dundeelibrarie…
— Dundee Libraries (@dundeelibraries) February 9, 2013

International Book Giving Day

Almost as soon as National Libraries Day is over we have International Book Giving Day. This is a volunteer initiative aimed at increasing children’s access to and enthusiasm for books. Do you know that:

• Most children in developing countries do not own books.
• In the United Kingdom, one-third of children do not own books.
• In the United States, two-thirds of children living in poverty do not own books.

Go to the link above to read more about how you can help, find out what other people are doing, download bookplates for your gift and much more. Afterwards, if you have a blog, you can write up what you did and add it to the blog hop. Last year, I sold my old banger! See if you can top that.
 

National Libraries Day in Scotland

It's National Libraries Day on Saturday, and libraries up and down Scotland will be having special events. Here's something very easy you can do to celebrate the worth of your own library, especially if you use social media.

A group of librarians, including me, is hoping to create an online record of what goes on in Scotland’s libraries. What do you use your library for? What does your library mean to you? If you are on Twitter, tweet the answers to those questions from now until Saturday. All sorts of libraries count, e.g. public, school, academic or special. Use the hashtag #nldScot, as well as the official one #nld13, so that we can gather the tweets together into a document which we hope will be the start of a larger project celebrating Scottish libraries. Make sure you mention the word library or libraries and consider adding a picture to make your tweet even better – though if you include anyone else in it, you must have their permission. If you don’t want your photograph online, you could take a picture of your hand holding the books you have borrowed or a card saying what you did in the library, e.g. “I used the computers to search for information.” For ideas, see this project.

Not on Twitter? Maybe you have a blog or other online site you could post on? Leave a link on our blog, or this one, or if you don't have anywhere to post just leave a comment about your library and we will tweet it for you. Please help!