The Library at the Isle of Man College of Further and Higher Education is celebrating its 25th birthday on Wednesday 22nd April 2015. In fact, we will be celebrating for a whole week to show how amazing this is. There will be cake and balloons, as well as different treasure hunts for different groups of students. There will be prizes, kindly donated by the Lexicon Bookshop, W. H. Smiths, etc. On Saturday 18th April, our neighbours in the Willaston area are invited to have tea and biscuits with us from 1000-1200 so that they can have a look at what we have on offer.

The College Library was formally opened by Ken Roberts, a previous principal, on 22nd June 1990. However, the Library had moved into its new space before this. The space looked large but soon was filled with shelving and tables with chairs.

There were four staff and we worked very hard to transfer everything to our new space, literally trolley load by trolley load. Mind you the shelves looked very bare with only the middle two shelves with books on them. We were given a very generous starting up budget and so it took some time and much effort to make a really good library for each of our students and the general public at large. This was recognised by our Ofsted report in 2001 when we were hailed as the “jewel in the crown”.

We, originally, started with two computer workstations – how the times have changed and we thought we were being advanced when one had green writing on a black background and the other was orange writing! We were the first library on the Island to have a commercial database of all our stock – that took a great deal of effort but it was well worth it for our patrons, who could find out exactly what we had at the touch of several buttons.

We have had over one million patrons pass through our doors over the last 25 years and it is great to see that the College Library is still relevant to students, staff and the wider public who want to be lifelong learners in the 21st century.

Our modern facilities include 26 Internet connected computers and a stock of over 45,000 items and a quiet place to study at any time. We are open nearly sixty hours per week during term time and office hours during College holidays. The only two weeks of the year that we close are the weeks of the Christmas holidays. We welcome anyone from the Island who would like to visit an academic library and we charge members of the public ?10 for an annual subscription, but students whether at school or university can join free of charge, as can over 60s.

If you have not visited us yet, then please feel free to do so or ring me on 648207 for more information.

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