October 2007
Support for Inspire continues to grow and there are now 35 participating library services from a wide range of sectors including public, further and higher education, health, research and special libraries.   The region-wide Inspire in the East Midlands scheme is now in place and participating libraries are working hard to encourage take up by members of the public.   The attractive promotional leaflet has been widely distributed across the region and the credit card sized findit! card has been welcomed as a simple and effective way of enabling access for learners.

Two colourful banners have been produced which are available for use in libraries and other organisations to help raise awareness of Inspire in the East Midlands and the findit! website.  The banners feature some of the treasures from the East Midlands’ libraries, many of which were mapped through the region’s DiadEM project.  The project which was completed in spring 2006 uncovered an exciting range of collections in the East Midlands. Some of these are already well known, such as the D.H. Lawrence Collection at the University of Nottingham and the Tennyson Research Centre in Lincoln, but DiadEM has found other special collections in all corners of the region, such as the material on hunting held at Melton Mowbray Library, colliery disasters at North Nottinghamshire College and the Osborne Robinson collection of posters at the University of Northampton.

Many other libraries and organisations across the East Midlands region also participated in the DiadEM project; these include bodies as diverse as the Chartered Management Institution and the British Horological Institute and small museum libraries such as the Canal Museum at Stoke Bruerne in Northamptonshire and the Commemorative Collectors Society in Nottinghamshire. While some of the collections are accessible by the members of the organisation only, it has been gratifying to see the willingness of librarians and curators to open their doors and to promote awareness of their information resources.