Community award for hospital library campaign

A campaign that led to the creation of a mobile library for patients at Northampton General Hospital has won a prestigious national award in recognition of the local community’s involvement. 

The library is run by the hospital’s volunteers and was created thanks to book donations from the public of Northampton when earlier this year, the hospital asked people living and working in Northampton to donate their favourite book. 

The book donation campaign won the Community Initiative Campaign of the Year category at the UK Public Sector Communications Awards last night (WED 6 SEPT). The awards celebrate excellence in communications in the NHS, local and national government, emergency services and not-for-profit bodies from across the UK. 

Feel-good factor

Commenting on Northampton General Hospital’s book donation campaign, the judges said: “It was a very well-planned campaign which had superb results. It was very community focused and had great support from key organisations across the town. The campaign had a real feel-good factor which shines a light on how fantastic volunteers are.” 

Emma Wimpress, volunteer services manager said: “We expanded our volunteer service to introduce a bedside library service for our patients. When we launched the campaign, our aim was to amass a collection of books that really reflects Northampton’s favourite reading material and give our patients a great choice of books to read while they’re staying with us. 

 “We were overwhelmed by the response. Over 5,000 books were donated from contemporary page-turners to literary heavyweights with thriller novel The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins proving to be the town’s most popular choice of book to donate. We’re really pleased that as well as a fantastic collection of novels, we’ve also got a great choice of poetry, non-fiction, biography and photographic books.” 

Local support

Local organisation supporting the scheme included:

• Fitter Body Bootcamp
• Grant Thornton
• Nationwide
• Northampton Borough Council
• Northampton College
• Northampton Saints Rugby Club
• Northampton Town Football Club
• Northamptonshire County Council and First for Wellbeing
• Northamptonshire Police
• Royal & Derngate
• Shoosmiths
• Tesco Mereway
• University of Northampton 

Click here for about volunteering at the hospital as part of the Bedside Book Club.