Stockbury Women's Institute turns a page in libraries fight (UK)

Book characters came to life as villagers devised a unique way to support their library. Stockbury WI, and a few specially-invited male guests, wore fancy dress and hugged the village's mobile library in celebration of the national Love Your Libraries campaign. Peter Pan, Captain Hook and Wendy joined hands with Harry Potter, characters from Alice in Wonderland and others, and encircled the bus on its weekly visit to the village hall car park on Thursday, November 10. WI branch chairman Mary Clarke, who dressed as Nancy from Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, said: "One of the National Federation of Women's Institute's suggestions of ways to raise awareness of the situation was to join hands and hug your local library. "Ours is the mobile library and we took it one step further by dressing up. It was huge fun. We had lots of laughs all getting dressed up and finding the right bits for our costumes. Then we had tea and homemade cake in the village hall." Mrs Clarke said Stockbury WI ran a library in the village hall in the late 70s and early 80s and described libraries as being the centre of many communities, offering numerous services, including Internet connection