PENARTH Library has won a prestigious national award at the Marketing Excellence Awards at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth.

The awards are funded by the Welsh Government, and recognise the fantastic work being done by staff in museums, archives and libraries across Wales often with very limited resources.

Penarth Library was the winner of the Public Libraries Award in the Demonstrating Marketing Excellence category of the awards. There were over 40 entries in all, from further education, higher education, health libraries, and of course public libraries. Penarth won the Award for its ProTeen project which was created with the vision of connecting with local youth and developing a mutually beneficial partnership to support creativity, ideas and innovation.

Great team efforts by library staff have organised a range of activities for teens such as Quiz and Game Nights over the last year, which have proved to be popular and well attended. The new provision of video games and facilities have undoubtedly helped.

There have also been consultations with young people through Penarth Library Teen Advisory Group meetings to keep up to date with their wants and needs.

Lively interaction and contact have been maintained through the active use by the library of social media such as Twitter and Facebook and the internet, and by using excellent and distinctive publicity materials. All this has resulted in greater use of the library by young people, and the staff will continue to develop

this relationship with its successful ProTeen project.