The Fiction Prescription: How to start on online book club
The idea of a book club has stemmed from as early as the 1900’s. Over 100 years later and we are trying our own spin on things.
In September 2024, CDDFT Libraries launched our online book club. We reached out to patrons in the trust to decide on our name and after a few deliberations, The Fiction Prescription was born.
Within the libraries, we have a small selection of lighter reading material, something that we’ve often tried to promote to staff members whose belief is that the library is only suitable for those studying. The suggestion of a book club to not only promote the fiction collection but also to attract a different area of staff came as a result of our Summer Reading Challenge, another venture we hope to make an annual occurrence.
We worked with other libraries in the North East to establish a book loan system that would allow us to stock a selection of each month’s title. As our trust staff are incredibly busy, we settled on changing the book every two months and allowing patrons to be involved as much or as little as they liked. Our books have varied across a variety of genres and we involve our members in the choice each month to try and find something to suit everyone.
What started as a small handful of interested staff has progressed steadily to have now reached nearly 120 members, with new people signing up each month. By creating a newsletter and an online Padlet, we’ve been able to communicate with our members and keep them regularly invested each month. We have organised a selection of small gatherings to allow our members to meet up in person, and while attendees have been very small to these events we have hope that as our numbers grow so will this interest.
The book club has been a staple in invested interested in the library. As a result of its success the CDDFT libraries were granted £1000 by our Trust Chairman to purchase a selection of lighter reading material, something we have been pushing at several events pertaining to Health & Wellbeing. This not only allowed us to improve our fiction selection, but also increase our Local Area collection and Health & Wellbeing collection at both sites.
Our hope for the future is that eventually everyone in the trust will know about the book club and know that all staff and students are welcome to get involved even if just to take a break from the hustle and bustle of daily life. We plan to create merchandise from an advertising point of view and also to give something back to our members. Our library teams have been working very hard behind the scenes to try and make this a reality.
Kris Stevens, Darlington Memorial Hospital Library,
County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
