'Join a Library Day' could become an annual event after the success of the National Year of Reading initiative this April.
National library membership saw a 24 per cent increase on figures from last April, prompting the idea of an annual drive on attracting new members.
Honor Wilson-Fletcher, NYR project director, said, "We set a target for the eight months of 350,000 new library members and we hit that target in less than two months."
Wilson-Fletcher attributes the success to "a mix of local activity and national campaigning" and says it doesn't stop there; "we will be doing more work to support libraries in reaching our target audiences both with the Summer Reading Challenge and with adult learning enrolment in the autumn."
3 comments:
Hi Holt
Thanks for covering the library story in your blog. On a similar note I thought you and your blog readers might be interested in an online project we've got - Wikireadia is the first good practice guide to reading for reading professionals, linking innovative projects across the reading sector from libraries, schools, prisons, businesses and further afield.
You can find it at http://www.yearofreading.org.uk/wikireadia
Would love it if you checked it out and passed the link on to anyone with a professional interest in reading,
all the best,
Wyl, information manager for the 2008 national year of reading
Very good news that the library membership campaign was so successful, but I would be interested to know if we have a geographical breakdown of where these new readers joined. I'm told that in my county the whole campaign was a bit of a damp squib - only 5 new joiners county-wide!
Hi anon,
I'd suggest you visit the National Year of Reading website at http://www.yearofreading.org.uk/ and contact them directly. They may not be planning to publish exact figures, or they may be released at a later date, but either way there's no harm in asking!
Holt Jackson
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