Anita

Anita has been sharing her love for books throughout her career as an English teacher.

She loves giving back to a library that featured significantly in her children’s lives as well as her own. She used to cut out reviews of new books and bring them to the old North Harrow library staff, who would nearly always buy those books as new stock. Alas buying new books is simply too expensive for our charity.

We rely on donated books and one of Anita’s first jobs was to sort out the books and prioritise them for putting on the shelves. Fortunately we have been given quite a few fiction books. But Anita would really like more current non-fiction books on topics such as cookery and gardening. With the help of Sue U and Wendy, she decides which books to keep, give to charity (St. Luke’s), Freecycle or sell. She tries not to reject any book on the grounds of her own personal taste.

Weeding out less-used books is an ongoing job too. A list of books not borrowed since 2009, provided by Harrow libraries, has been most helpful in making a start to this. One of Anita’s aims is to involve a wider range of members of the community. She helped arrange visits to the Library from Bhamika Bhudia, an English teacher who has written dual language Gujurati/English children’s books, as well as Barbara Towell, who gave a Holocaust Memorial talk.

Anita would like to make the Library an even more welcoming place by having comfy chairs and coffee tables near the front of the Library and perhaps having a volunteer to organise coffees and teas. Organising the stock is what Anita is good at but she loves everything about being in the Library. Seeing our youngest users in the children’s section of the Library brings joy to her heart as she relives earlier times with her own children.

Return to our volunteer page.