We received some marvellous entries this month in our 'Colours' photo competition, they really cheered us up with all the rain we've been having. Check out the gallery below and you'll see why it was hard to pick a winner this month but our favourite shot was from Niall Cullen, aged 15. We love how the rainbow perfectly hits the boat on the Mersey - it looks like it's colouring it in and bringing it to life!

Our final photo competition is a special one. There's no theme so it's a free for all and we're looking for people's best shots from across out beautiful city. However, you only have until Wednesday 6th November to enter so send your entries to [email protected] as quickly as possible! It's your last opportunity to feature in our 2020 calendar and then face the public vote for your chance to be our overall winner with the prize of a camera up for grabs at the end of the year.

We had a brilliant turn out at our local history talks evening on 16th October, with 60 people joining us at St Cecilia's Club to hear from our speakers.

First up was Dr Oriel Prizeman from Cardiff University who has been investigating surviving Carnegie libraries, both in the UK and the USA, to see how they're being used today. Oriel gave us a fascinating insight into the similar design features of many of these libraries, which were built to reflect the environmental challenges of the time, and explained how she has been using laser scanning software to map the buildings in greater detail. As Lister Steps & The Old Library are one of the partners in her ongoing research project, we're looking forward to seeing how this work progresses over the next few years.

We then heard from Katie Taylor, one of our research volunteers, who told us about the impact of the public library movement on children, the kind of books they might have read in the early days of the Lister Drive Library and the strict rules that they had to follow!

During the break, we were able to look at some of the finds from our archaeological dig back in June which were brought along by Vanessa Oakden, Curator of Community Archaeology at the Museum of Liverpool. Vanessa talked us through the process of the dig - including when we had to reschedule it due to heavy rain! - which led to the discovery of 582 finds and the foundations of 19th century Brook Cottage, which stood on The Old Library site in the1800s.

Next up was Susan Bennett, another of our research volunteers, who has been looking into the history of the three local streets - Russian Drive, Kremlin Drive & Moscow Drive. This is a huge task which involves going back through each house to see who has lived there since the 1860s, generating a spreadsheet with over 4000 entries! It's shown us a really interesting picture of the diversity of our local neighbourhood through the years, the huge range of occupations & the varied lives people have lived right on the doorstep of the library.

We finished off with Kate Deegan-Munro, also a member of the volunteer team, who entertained us with a fictional account of the day in the life of a boy-runner, based on her research into the people who used to work in Liverpool's public libraries when they first opened.

A huge thank you to our speakers for putting so much time and effort into their presentations and giving up their evening to share their work with our community. It was a really enjoyable event and it was great to meet so many people who are interested in the history of the local area. With such a positive response, we're looking forward to putting on similar events when we're up and running in the library!

This year, we ran various poetry taster workshops to celebrate National Poetry Day and to have a go at getting creative with words.

In the first session, we were joined by local writer Emma Prior who brought along some props to get our senses going and think about the memories that the various sights, sounds, smells, touch and tastes brought back. We then had a go at writing, step-by-step, our own poems based on childhood memories using different senses to describe what we could remember.

For our evening session, we were joined by Arts Groupie who had us working fast, starting off by making mind-maps and then using these words to create poems which we then revised & chopped & changed & re-ordered until we'd written about five different poems in an hour!

Both sessions were really fun & we were all surprised at our hidden poetry talents!  Plus we got some great feedback from those who came along:

Excellent session. Amazing what you can achieve with direction.

Excellent, thoroughly enjoyed it. Re-awoke my enthusiasm for poetry.

We were really pleased that the workshops went down well and will definitely looking to run more in the future when we move into The Old Library!

Wow, we've had some fantastic entries for our September photo competition theme 'Liverpool's Heritage'. It's been great to see people's creative shots of The Old Library after our Heritage Open Days but also to see images from across our city which has so much history and so many interesting stories to tell.

However, as always there can only be one winner and this month we've chosen Jim Burrows' shot of the ceiling of the Princes Road Synagogue. We love the light and rich colours brought to life in this image, as well as how it reflects the diversity of Liverpool's culture and heritage. Congratulations Jim! You can see more of the stunning images we received this month in our gallery below.

Now that the days are getting a little darker and colder, we've decided that the theme for October will be COLOURS to cheer us all up. We've left this open to interpretation so are looking forward to seeing lots of creative shots from across our vibrant city and we love seeing photos from L13 and surrounding areas. To enter, send your entries to [email protected] by 25th October for the chance to be our next winner.