Saturday, November 14, 2009

Community Wide Read

The National Endowment for the Arts has developed The Big Read program. There are many titles to choose from and the goal is to get your entire community involved in reading this one book. Libraries apply for grants that help pay for the events planned to promote the community involvement including a kickoff event, keynote event with author reading or lecture by a key biographer, discussions held at multiple locations, and other programs related to the book. For a small community the grants range from $2,500 - $7,500 and must be matched 1 to 1. This program includes educational and promotional materials. Find out more on their website http://www.neabigread.org/ Even if the matching grant requirement puts this program out of your budget exploring this site can give you ideas for ways to expand your book discussion into related programs, plus the titles approved for the program are all great reads for any book group.

Is The Big Read too big for you? Maybe you could try One Book Project. Just try to get everyone in your community to read one book and discuss it. The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress maintains a list of One Book Projects http://www.read.gov/resources/ Search for one in your state and you can contact that library for ideas on how to have one in your library.

The American Library Association has also provided “One Book – One Community: Planning Your Community-Wide Read” which is available online http://publicprograms.ala.org/orc/pdfs/onebookguide.pdf

Regardless of the size of your community, programming budget, or staff experience, your library should still be able to find some ideas here to encourage a community wide reading event.

1 comment:

  1. This blog is a resource for a library that wants to try a community reading project. This would be very good for rural areas.

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