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January 10, 2010
Absolutely right thinking, and good news from The Reading Agency
If a clothes shop said - 'our sales are down, people must have decided to go naked' - you would know that the owner was barmy, had a lousy shop and was incapable of giving people what they want. Yet, so often we hear councils and officials saying 'people have stopped using the library, reading must be a thing of the past' They are mad
So Miranda McKearney (who is extremely good and sane) is quite right when she says:
The analysis of libraries’ current position sometimes implies that the public are no longer interested in what libraries offer readers.
At The Reading Agency we have found this to be misleading. When libraries take positive steps to attract readers through creative initiatives, the public respond with alacrity. There is a real demand for reading groups, author events, challenges and promotions, as preliminary figures from The Reading Agency's 2009 partnership work with libraries shows (more to come later when we have our final year’s results in)
- 725,000 children taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge, up 35,000 on 2008
- 50,060 people joining a library to take part in our reading challenges (the Summer Reading Challenge and the Six Book Challenge)
- 25% more Chatterbooks reading groups running in libraries, with schools set to join the Chatterbooks network in 2010
- the 8372 people who came to our Reading Partners author events in libraries
The best library services are creating an exciting, lively reading offer and the public are responding. We should look to the growth trends in carving out a new vision for a new role for libraries in promoting reading in the community.
Miranda McKearney
Posted by Perkins at January 10, 2010 7:13 PM
Comments
The analogy of the clothes shop is a good one and it leads me to this thought: imagine going to see your bank manager and saying that you've got a great idea for a new shop, which you'd like the bank to back with a substantial sum of money. Your business plan is that, every year, you will spend 90 percent of the bank's money on overheads (buildings, staff etc) and 10 percent on buying the stock. If no-one showed much interest in the stock, you'd then increase the overheads to 92 percent.The bank, quite rightly, would just laugh, yet this is exactly what libraries are doing.....with OUR money and in OUR name.
Posted by: Amanda Field at January 11, 2010 9:34 AM
Amanda. Very good- nearly right, but the buildings mostly come free! Happy New Year. Hope you have read Delane. Tim
Posted by: Tim Coates at January 11, 2010 7:39 PM