Kelso Library celebrates 100 years of reading
Monday, May 8 2006
A new outdoor reading area and a new lamp at the library entrance will mark the Centenary of the opening of the Kelso Library when Scottish Borders Council Convener and local Councillor, Alasdair Hutton presides over a day of events on 16 May.
"The library has given great pleasure to many thousands of Kelsonians in the hundred years since it was founded here by the generosity of Andrew Carnegie," said Councillor Hutton. "This day will also mark the start of the next hundred years of the library's work in Kelso."
"The light in the entrance arch has been restored to symbolise the illumination which reading and now the modern forms of information can bring to everybody who is willing to open their minds to learn."
The celebrations will start at 10am. Pupils of Eccles/Leitholm school will recreate the schoolroom of a hundred years ago in the morning, and at 3pm members of the older generation will look back at days gone by. At 5.30pm, Councillor Hutton, who is also the narrator of the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, will read excerpts of work about the Borders by local writers. An informal dinner will be held at the Cross Keys Hotel at 7.30pm in honour of the lunch enjoyed at the same hotel 100 years ago by those who attended the library's opening ceremony. The dinner will cost £10.
Councillor Hutton said, "We will also be initiating a project to revitalise the garden area at the back of the library which has lain derelict for many years. Over the next few weeks we shall create an area where library users of all ages can enjoy reading, or being read to, out of doors on those days which allow it."
"I am very keen that this should be a place where we can introduce youngsters to the pleasures of reading and story telling, and where they can make the sort of noise which youngsters do naturally without disturbing the older users of the building."
Councillor Hutton said he hoped that as many people as possible would come to the library on its centenary day and continue to return regularly to use the modern facilities which the library provides for users of all ages and interests.
For more information or tickets for the dinner, please contact Kelso Library 01573 223171.
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