Libraries and leisure

Be Skilled for Life

The library service has collections of books and media packs to make learning skills for life more enjoyable.

The Basic Skills Agency defines “Skills for Life” as the “ability to read, write and speak English and use mathematics at a level necessary to function and progress at work and in society in general.”

To help individuals improve their reading writing and maths skills we have “Reading and Numbers” collections in all of our bigger libraries.

Content of Collections

The majority of the titles are contained in two distinct collections.

Essential First Choice
To help those who enjoy reading fiction and want to progress to more challenging works we have an “Essential First Choice Collection” which offers reading materials at various reading levels.

This collection was developed in consultation with adult learners, basic skills tutors and librarians. It features titles specifically written for basic skills learners as well as mainstream texts that have been selected for their accessibility. It includes fiction and non-fiction, short stories and graphic novels.

Literacy and Numeracy Skills
The titles in this collection include books to help with grammar, punctuation, spelling and handwriting. There are also some books on number skills.
Audio packs where you can listen to a story on a CD or cassette are also available

Stock Allocations

New books are constantly being added to these collections. We have some Customer feedback forms are available so that users can comment on the content of the collections.