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Turning back the pages of history
BOOKWORMS are enjoying fun-filled activities at a Dales library this week, as staff and visitors step back in time to celebrate its rich 70-year history.
Bakewell Library – which opened this week 70 years ago in the town's Old Market Hall – is hosting a 1940s-themed display and a series of workshops to mark the milestone.
Age Concern members will reminisce about wartime Bakewell today and on Friday there will be story-telling, traditional games and a free evening book reading by Derbyshire crime novelist Stephen Booth.
Staff wore costumes on Monday as they performed the drama A Journey Into the 1940s for visiting Bakewell Methodist Junior School pupils.
Deputy library manager Carole Newbold said: "It was great fun and designed to show the kids what life was like at the time, so we had an evacuee, a Land Girl and stern librarian."
The library moved from New Street to its current Granby Road home in 1998, when Princess Anne conducted the official opening.
Things have moved on since 1940 and now Bakewell Library stocks DVDs, audiobooks and albums and has a popular computer suite.
Carole, who first started at the library in 1973, said it was a great place to work, where no two days were the same for its nine members of staff.
"Every day we get all sorts of weird and wonderful requests like how to make a fishing fly and one man who rang asking how to iron jeans, as his wife was on holiday."
She added: "One time a bloke asked one of our girls if we'd any books on 'engine grease'. She was looking for quite a while until she decided to consult a colleague. It ended up he was studying Ancient Greece – which gave us all a good giggle."
Dr Trevor Brighton, president of Bakewell and District Historical Society, will host a talk on the history of Bakewell at the library on Wednesday March 24, at 7.30pm.
Dr Brighton said: "The library is an incredibly useful service for me as an historian. I'm particularly grateful for its inter-library loan system, which I use to help me research and write books."
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Weather for Bakewell
Saturday 04 February 2012
Today
Light snow
Temperature: -3 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: South
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 2 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: West
