Manchester MegaCon is Coming

27 – 28 July 2024

With the Manchester MegaCon just around the corner, you may want to immerse yourself in some Manga to help you prepare for this great event.

Explore Comics Plus®, the totally free service where you can access thousands of digital comics, graphic novels, and manga. The collection includes popular and award-winning titles for every age range and interest.

If you would like to get yourself ready for Manchester, why not pop into your local library and ask about Comics Plus®

Time for a Career Change?

We have all been there – you enjoy your summer holiday and then have to go back to a job you are no longer enjoying. Thoughts about a change of career enter your head.

If you are looking for a new path, then Universal Class is a great starting point. You can explore a myriad of different courses to get a better understanding of different career paths and discover whether you will enjoy it and even more importantly whether you have an aptitude for it. These courses are absolutely free of charge – simply visit your local library to get signed up.

Simple to use, you select the training course you would like to study and off you go. The summary tells you how long each course will be and gives you an overview of the course and lessons. Submit ‘homework’ and a ‘live’ tutor will review, and provide feedback and results.

There are hundreds of free courses to choose from, like ‘Accounting101’ for example;

Course Overview:

This extensive online course, “Accounting and Bookkeeping 101”, is meticulously crafted with the novice in mind. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or a professional seeking to broaden your financial literacy, our course offers a comprehensive exploration into accounting, ensuring you grasp the essential foundations. Designed for those with little to no prior knowledge, our modules delve deep into fundamental principles, illustrated with rich examples to aid comprehension.

Get Great Green Fingers

The summer is upon us and finally the weather is improving. Being able to spend time in the garden is great, but it also means you notice how much your garden needs some attention.

Why not take a free course in Landscaping to help you learn how to make the most of your outdoor space. Universal Class is a great free service available from your local library. Offering hundreds of courses to choose from, which you can study from the comfort of your own home and at your own pace. Courses like ‘Landscaping101’ for example;

  • From Canvas to Masterpiece: Learn to visualize barren plots and aging yards as opportunities waiting for your transformative touch. Equip yourself to reimagine and reinvigorate these spaces into lush, captivating sanctuaries.
  • Laying the Blueprint: Dive deep into design principles. From harmony and color to proportion and lines, decode the secrets of creating balanced, eye-catching layouts.
  • Foundations of Assessment: Every space narrates a story. Learn to listen. Determine the underlying needs, the core purpose of the landscape, and chart out the journey from concept to creation.
  • Strategic Planning: Translate visions into actionable steps. Be it choosing to collaborate with professionals or taking a DIY route, our comprehensive modules encompass it all.
  • Common Pitfalls & Their Evasion: Mistakes can be expensive. Acquaint yourself with common errors in landscaping and arm yourself with strategies to sidestep them, ensuring a smooth-sailing project execution.
  • Maximizing Existing Potential: Not every space needs a complete overhaul. Sometimes, enhancing existing elements can work wonders. Learn the art of optimization and rejuvenation.

Visit your local library today to find out how you can get started with Universal Class.

UK Election Looms

Politics can be a minefield at the best of times, but leading up to elections everything goes even more crazy. Trying to keep on top of all the latest articles and news can be a hard and confusing slog.

By using PressReader you can easily search for ‘UK Politics’ and immediately see all the articles from hundreds of different publications, delivered in a convenient and easy to read format.

In addition to newspaper articles you will also find a wealth of magazines, so you can delve deeper into their targeted articles commenting on the Election. Incredibly, this is a totally free service from your local library!

Get ready for the Olympics

Excitement is building for the up coming Paris Olympics, starting on Friday 26th July 2024 and running until 11th August 2024.

If you are lucky enough to be able to attend this fabulous event, a little knowledge of French will be a huge benefit. You can learn all the basics you need to travel around Paris totally free.

Pop into your library and ask them about Transparent Languages Online, a great way to learn languages from the comfort of your own home.

Make your trip to the Paris Olympics easy with a grasp of the french you need to get around the city, order food, arrange accommodation or buy tickets.

A New Gamified Experience with LOTE4Kids

Transform your children’s learning experience with the new dynamic, interactive Weekly Learning Dashboard from LOTE4Kids.

A self-driven progression and reward system which encourages your children to set their own goals and challenges.

Key benefits;

  • Allows children to track their progress and set goals
  • Encourages reading and self-guided learning
  • Creates a heightened sense of achievement

By integrating scoring, awards and rules of play into their activities, children are motivated to build and maintain good learning habits while expanding their horizons. So now it has never been easier to support and encourage your children – simply pop into your local library and ask them about LOTE4Kids today.

Dodge ‘Summer Slide’ with Comics Plus.

Engaging with adventurous titles during the summer holidays is one way you can maintain the learning and work your children have accomplished during the school year. 

Research shows that having easy access to books and reading at least five during this more relaxed time, can slow the drop in reading levels, i.e. the dreaded “summer slide,” which is particularly significant for families facing financial hardships (Alexander, Entwisle, & Olson, 2007; Kim, 2004).

The Comics Plus collection available from your local library provides easy access to thousands of titles and is free of charge.

These titles will whisk readers into whole new worlds of adventure! They’ll travel to magical places, meet new characters, and experience the depths of their imaginations through countless adventures. Summer reading has never been so fun!

Simply take a look at the Featured section of the Comics Plus website to explore all the Summer Reading Adventures.

Nos Vacances en France

If you have plans to visit France this year, complete the Essentials course before you go to quickly master a set of commonly used words and phrases.

The course, from Transparent Language Online, covers topics such as eating out, basic banking, directions and transportation across 33 lessons, and it contains approximately 500 words and phrases. It can be completed in 20-25 hours.

Transparent Language Online is a free service available from your local library. So wherever you are planning to go for your holidays, you can learn the basics quickly and easily from the comfort of your own home.

Picture Books Now Available From Comics Plus

The Comics Plus platform, free from your local library, will now also include picture books. Offering emerging readers the same unlimited, simultaneous access comics and manga fans already enjoy, the initial collection features hundreds of titles from existing publisher partners, including ABDO and Cherry Lake, with more partners to be announced later this year.

“We couldn’t be more excited for the addition of picture books to Comics Plus,” says Raquel Ryan, MSEd, LibraryPass’ Chief Experience Officer. “With engaging stories and immersive 2-page spreads, these titles will help introduce young people to the world of reading!”

With Comics Plus, readers can access thousands of digital comics, graphic novels, and manga through the library, with unlimited simultaneous access for online and offline reading, free of charge.

Looking For a New Challenge?

Spring is finally here and now we can shrug off those winter blues we are all looking for some exciting new adventures and challenges.

There is a great new service available from your local library which allows you to do courses in a huge range of topics, totally free of charge and at your own pace. Ask your local librarian about Universal Class to find out more.

Simple to use, you just select the training course you would like to study and off you go. The summary tells you how long each course will be and gives you an overview of the course and lessons. So if you fancy trying your hand at something new, like this course on Cake Decorating, take a look ….

In the heart of every cake lies a story waiting to be told, and the brush that paints this narrative is cake decorating. It’s the canvas where art meets culinary, and a blank cake is your opportunity to tell tales of love, celebrations, and milestones. Are you ready to embark on this delectable journey? Let’s dive into the magical realm of cake decorating, where every swirl of icing and sprinkle of glitter transports you into a world of wonder.

You can even submit ‘homework’ and a ‘live’ tutor will review your work and provide feedback and results to you.

So if you are looking to broaden your horizons this Spring, speak to your local librarian about Universal Class.