Celebrate #LibrariesWeek by Reading Well

Come and see the new Reading Well Collection in the Health Library in the CEC at Royal Stoke. Or browse the collection online and see the extra books we have chosen for our Reading Well collection.

We have the ten Uplifting books recommended by a panel of NHS staff - Uplifting resources: for the NHS, from the NHS as well as others on the Reading Agency’s Reading Well lists.

The NHS Uplifting Collection has fiction, non-fiction, and poetry books, supported by uplifting digital resources, including poems, websites, videos and apps. Click here for links to the digital resources.

The Health Library at County has the Uplifting books too and others you can read to relax and unwind.

The Reading Agency has published reports about the benefits of reading for pleasure including these findings:

• Readers for pleasure report fewer feelings of stress and depression than non-readers (28% more likely to report feelings of depression).
• Reading for just 30 minutes a week made people 18% more likely to report high self-esteem and greater life satisfaction.
• Children with reading difficulties are at greater risk of developing mental health conditions later in life.
• 2 in 5 (39%) children find it difficult to talk about their feelings or emotions, but 9 in 10 (90%) parents agree that reading together is a useful tool to help open up.
• Reading regularly improves health literacy: an individual’s ability to find, read and understand health information.

Students are not left out. The Reading Agency has published a Reading Well Student Wellbeing Toolkit. The toolkit recommends the titles from the Reading Well for mental health collections that are available for free download via public library e-lending services to support your mental health while studying. The toolkit also contains information about their Read, Talk, Share campaign and signposting.

Campus Library has a leisure reading collection through our partnership with the public library in Newcastle-Under-Lyme. Just use your Keele card to check these out.

When you have read everything we have that catches your eye, don’t forget the local public libraries in Staffordshire for print and eBooks. You don’t need to live in in Staffordshire to join and there are branches in Newcastle, Clayton and of course Stafford. Join their libraries online to start reading their books in a couple of days.