Bishops Stortford's Library of Things

By now, some of you will have mastered the banjo, learned a new language and yoga'd yourself to the point that you could comfortably sleep in a shoebox...

..or, perhaps you've just been lucky enough to catch up on some gardening, and cooked some wholesome meals from scratch.

If that is the case, please save your seeds!

The Bishops Stortford Sharing Library intends to bounce back as fast as the rest of you, and we will be including a seed library to offer free seeds to the community.

Pop them in an envelope and label them with whatever information you can and, when it is safe for us all to be out and about again, we will add them in to our state-of-the-art seed storage unit. (A rather battered but perfectly functioning filing cabinet)

We are sad to say the the announced Repair Café Planning Meeting has been postponed until further notice, for obvious reasons.

We hope that you are staying home as much as you can, rediscovering old passions, learning new skills, and thinking about your community in a new light.

It is reassuring to see so many people pull together in our town, and so many people are already helping each other.

If you need extra help from your neighbours, or would like to find out how you can help, a local group has started up that is working on this

https://www.facebook.com/groups/196866378305274/

Stay safe, and love your community. ♥️

The Library is growing!
The Learner’s Community Library, which has provided equipment, materials, support and advice to children in the community since 2011, has shut down due to losing their residence in the Herts and Essex hospital this year. Their inventory, which included literally thousands of items including assistive technology and communication aids, has been distributed among many local schools and, we are happy to say, to us.
This means that in the coming months we will be able to offer these helpful items to those that want to make use of them. Many of the volunteers who offered support at the Learners Community Library will continue to do so at Bishop’s House on Windhill, where we are based.
Councilor Colin Woodwood, who was a trustee of the LCL, has generously provided £1300 towards the storage needed to house the new stock.
We are working hard towards creating an online catalogue so these items will be searchable from our website. It will take a while to list all the items so for now we’ll just say this:
We have a robot cat!

If you are looking for a sign, this is it!
As some of you may have noticed, there has been little activity from the Library of Things over the past couple of months. This has been due to some health issues from a member of staff, but we can now happily report that work on the Library has resumed.
A lot of people have been contacting to ask when we are open. The short answer is - we don't know yet. We are behind schedule, and there is still a lot of work to do. We will keep our posts more regular so you can see our progress.
We do have more news to follow, so expect to see a LOT of L.O.T. in your feed this week!

More kind words by Cat Barkley at the Stortford Indie!

Full steam ahead for Bishop's Stortford's Library of Things The borrowing hub now has a pressure washer, bread maker, wallpaper stripper, a six-man tent, a carpet cleaner and Sega Megadrive on its books

We made the local paper! Thank you to Cat Barkley for writing this piece in Bishop's Stortford Independent. Would love to know who wrote the call to arms editorial a couple of pages later!

A big thank you the the hosts at Upper Norwood Library Hub for showing me round their Library of Things and talking about their experiences setting up. Just as you'd expect, the carpet cleaner is their most popular item!

Thank you to everybody who has responded. The response has been enormously encouraging and your input is vital to making sure that the Library of Things is done right.
A special thank you to everyone who has donated items already! Most of the donations happen to be items right at the top of the wishlist, so we expect they will go to many good homes, over and over again.
Remember, if you want to get involved or ypu you have a skill you'd like to share, please get in touch. Donations are gratefully recieved at Bishops House on Windhill.
Sharing is caring ♻️

Good news, everyone! Stortford is getting its own Library of Things! A place to borrow those items that are incredibly handy or super fun, but you don't really need all year round. Make less waste, save money and share skills in our open workshops. What kind of things? Well, it's entirely up to you! This is a community led project and therefore we need your input. We've just received some generous funding and are making a wishlist. Garden strimmers or GoPro cameras? Breadmakers or board games? Please let us know and help us build your ecological, economical, and exciting community resource.