‘Our community library is about so much more than books’

Former head teacher Isobel Nixon,

66, is chair of trustees at the charity she set up to save Newby and Scalby Library In North Yorkshire from closure. She is married with two grown-up children.

One evening back in 2017, my husband Peter came home with a leaflet. North Yorkshire County Council had announced the closure of our local library, and was looking for a voluntary management group. I had recently retired as head of Scarborough College and, as a former English teacher, it seemed sacrilegious to close a library – so I decided to go along to a meeting about its future.

It was serendipitous that I met a group of other retired professionals with an amazing combination of skills, including a GP, a PA, an EX-NHS manager and a primary school head. We decided to set up a charitable trust to run the library, and five years later, we are thriving.

We have recruited 60 volunteers, and keep the library open five days a week. The council pays our rent and electricity but we fund everything else ourselves. We run a regular second-hand book stall, which raises about £2,500 a year, and we were lucky to get a grant from the National Lottery for £18,900 in 2019. This funded our garden. We now have a lawn, pergola, fairy garden and covered classroom.

Our library is a real community hub: it’s about so much more than books. We have a lot of local young families, so we run activities for children, including a weekly story time, craft sessions and holiday activities, and take our pop-up library to local schools. For older people, we have knit and natter sessions, and mah-jong and Scrabble afternoons. It’s a lovely place to socialise. The whole experience has been life-affirming. The skills I acquired in my working life are being put to good use, and I’ve made some great friends with the trustees and volunteers.

My advice to anyone considering doing this is simple: make sure you have plenty of people around you. You can’t do it alone. It really helps that my trustees have such a wealth of professional expertise.

Not a day goes by when I don’t feel moved by what I see at the library – it could be an elderly woman being offered a cup of tea, or a child reading quietly on our comfy chairs. It’s wonderful.

✢ newbyandscalbylibrary.co.uk

‘Not a day goes by when I don’t feel moved’