Oswestry Library and Booka Bookshop collaboration has many benefits

An article in “The Bookseller” on 21 March 2014, headlined “BA urges libraries ‘not to compete’ with bookshops”, touches on what is happening successfully in Oswestry already; an ongoing and beneficial spirit of collaboration existing between Shropshire Council’s Oswestry Library and Booka Bookshop.

They are both based in a rural market town and have found that working together, rather than competitively, is what comes naturally and helps them make the most of the shared middle section of the Venn diagram where book buyers and book borrowers overlap.

Examples include:

• Being key partners in the organisation of the annual, successful Oswestry LitFes, and thus able to plan and host author events for adults and children together
• Organising an “Oswestry LitFest Recommends” promotion of four new fiction titles in the four months prior to the festival, with copies available – with readers’ guide – to buy at Booka or to borrow from the library.  Subsequently, two of the featured authors (Carole Matthews and Julia Crouch) were guests at this year’s festival
• The library’s hosting of events for which Booka has been offered an author.  For instance, a joint CSI Oswestry event featured crime writer Elly Griffiths in a double bill with a difference when library staff invited a West Mercia Police forensic investigator to come along too
• Booka’s hosting of a Summer Reading Challenge character each summer holiday as part of a town treasure hunt challenge for children organised by Oswestry Library
• Forming a judging panel for an annual children’s writing competition supported by the town’s Rotary Club
• Displaying event publicity materials for one another.

There are many advantages to working in this way.  Oswestry Library can offer flexible space for events, author-friendly audiences and access to its promotional networks, while Booka has its own dedicated fanbase and the ability to entice well-known writers to our corner of Shropshire.  In terms of developing communities where reading is treasured and where books – whether bought or borrowed – are valued, our partnership can only be a good thing.  Certainly, both bookshop and library are thriving.  And with Booka shortlisted for Independent Bookseller of the Year 2014  and Oswestry Library recently labelled “the best little library in Britain” by Frank Cottrell Boyce, hopes are high for continued success in the future.