February 4th is National Libraries Day, a UK-wide celebration drawing attention to the value of libraries, and campaigning against their closure.
Activities are planned across Scotland, which has over 500 libraries, many of which are finding that their services under strain.
Four rural libraries in Angus region were closed recently, and others, such as Lochwinnoch library in Renfrewshire, face the prospect of closure. Even some popular libraries are finding their opening hours cut and budgets for buying new stock reduced.
The central aim of Saturday’s events is to promote and protect libraries, and the activities have been designed to have a festive feel, from an around Glasgow librarithon - with participants travelling by tube to visit all the libraries near stops on the underground - to a challenge issued to readers in Danderhall to borrow, between them, every one of the 10,000 books on the library’s shelves.
Other libraries will host coffee mornings, scavenger hunts, author events and children’s workshops.
Below are some of the highlights, if we've missed an event in your area, why not use the comment facility on this page to tell us about it, or tweet details to @heraldscotland and we'll share them with our followers.
Book Amnesty, Glasgow libraries: The 33 city libraries will have a fine free day. Borrowers are encouraged to return found or overdue books – no matter how long ago the date stamp - they will not be charged.
Librarithon, Glasgow libraries: A group of librarians have organised a librarithon, via the Glasgow Subway. Participants will meet at the library at the Gallery of Modern Art at 10am, and then visit Hillhead, Ibrox and the Gorbals libraries, with activities planned at each branch.
Flash Readaloud, Edinburgh (location tbc): One of the capital’s libraries will become the venue for an unofficial group reading aloud event, from midday on Saturday. All are welcome, with the location to be announced on Friday via @LouderLibraries on Twitter.
Storytime, Edinburgh Central Children’s Library: Children’s author Lari Don, who wrote Rocking Horse War and First Aid for Fairies, will lead a Storytime session.
Time Machine, Leith library: The library will take visitors back in time to 1932, the year it opened, exploring how things have changed – and how they haven’t.
Video Diary, Craigmillar library: Visitors will be invited to make an entry in the video diary, recording their memories and experiences of the library today for future visitors to enjoy.
Writing on the Wall, Piershill and Currie libraries: A wall in each of these libraries will be cleared to allow visitors to share their reflections on why they love libraries.
Mugshot reviews, Musselburgh library: Staff and readers are being asked to have their photo taken with a book they have enjoyed reading.
Empty the shelves, Danderhall library: Staff at the library have challenged local book-lovers to borrow every one of the 10,000 books from its shelves.
With a borrowing entitlement of four books for children and six for adults, they estimate that it would take 284 children, 28 teenagers and 303 adults to achieve the target, with the aim of encouraging people to get back into the habit of borrowing books. The library, which is normally closed on Saturdays, will be open from 10am to 3pm. A similar challenge has been issued for Longniddry Library, which is open from 10am to 1pm.
Design challenge, across East Lothian libraries: Competition calling for children’s designs for a local mobile library
Murder mystery, Orkney library: Stewart Bain, who works at Orkney Library and archive, has adapted Agatha Christie’s murder mystery, The Body in the Library, so that it can be told through twitter. You can follow his updates, from Friday Feb 3, via @thebodyinthelibrary.
"We hope people enjoy following The Body in the Library on Twitter, and that it encourages those who’ve never read Agatha Christie before to check out their local library and take a fresh look at her novels," he said.
"We have plenty of copies of The Body in the Library to hand out to those who’ve been following the mystery unfold on Twitter and want to know the ending – or see what they missed from the novel."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article