THERE'S been a lot of well-deserved coverage for a certain Royal who celebrated a birthday last week, but not so much about another institution that is 150 years old this month.

On Friday, August 14, libraries across the country celebrate the milestone birthday and Winsford Library is partying more than most.

For Cheshire County Council has published a guide to explain the library's work in detail for the first time.

The guide, available at the library, explains what it can offer and how its role has changed over the years.

The county's community development committee chairman, Larry Toale, said: "What springs to mind are our books, extensive reference collections and computers, yet there are other innovations.

"There are minicom textphones, videocaption readers, books in braille, books on cassette, special computer screens and speech synthesisers.

"You can also hire CDs, videos, CD-ROMs, computer games and DVDs. Libraries have been at the cornerstone of education and are continuing to quench the thirst for knowledge in the 21st Century."

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.