Three into one will go

In July this year, three publicly funded library development agencies—LaunchPad, Well Worth Reading and the Reading Partnership—will be merged into one body called the Reading Agency. The three existing agencies have an impressive track record in using libraries and the skills of librarians in partnership with other organisations to bring reading to a wider group of people, and to enhance the enjoyment and broaden the experience of people who already read.

The Reading Agency will provide a single point of entry for potential partners wanting to make use of the powerful national network and expertise of libraries. The agency will co-ordinate and build the profile of best practice in the promotion of reading; it will orchestrate research into reading habits and the effectiveness of reading projects; it will aim to build the confidence and raise the standards and the profile of the library profession; and it will work to influence library policy through its links with government bodies.

The agency will be able to take advantage of UK-wide economies of scale, and rationalise its own funding to create a stable and sustainable operation that is less confusing for outsiders than the range of organisations with related aims that existed previously. As a single agency, it will also be able to give attention to the connections between adults' and children's reading, because it will work with all age groups.

The three existing bodies grew largely out of the inspired and evangelical enthusiasm of a few individuals with skills in marketing, research and arts administration who teamed up with equally inspired librarians. Together they have helped to revitalise libraries' engagement with the culture of reading and with contemporary literature. They have supported libraries in reaching out beyond their physical environment to readers in prisons, hospitals, schools, supermarkets and over the airwaves. They have had a positive effect on a lot of people's lives.

Projects that are up and running under the separate bodies will continue under the new umbrella organisation, and there will be scope to put new ideas into practice. With its creative, flexible and imaginative record, the Reading Agency, working with libraries, which are accessible to everyone, has huge potential for invigorating the reading life of the nation.

In the words of Miranda McKearney, development director of all three original bodies, the"grim but useful bit of jargon" for this invigoration is "reader development". This she describes as "work that expands people's reading horizons, often by connecting people with each other to share reading experiences". It is a concept from which the book industry will certainly stand to benefit.

Well worth its parts

So what have the component parts of the Reading Agency already achieved? Well Worth Reading (WWR) is the longest-standing agency, originally founded in the late 1980s by Southern Arts to enable collaboration between several southern library authorities. It has grown into a body that concentrates on the reading of adults and young adults, with its own programme of promotions, training, partnerships and projects.

These have included two schemes financed by the Wolfson Public Libraries Challenge Fund, under the auspices of the Department of Culture, Media & Sport: YouthBOOX, in which youth workers and libraries work together to inspire socially excluded teenagers to read; and the Vital Link, a basic skills literacy project using the expertise of librarians. These schemes are built on strong new partnerships with national bodies including the National Youth Agency, the National Literary Trust and the Basic Skills Agency. Well Worth Reading is also behind BOOX, the annual teenage reading promotion which has had such an effect on the way in which libraries and schools promote reading to 13 to 16-year-olds (Website www.boox.org.uk).

LaunchPad, the library development agency for children, was founded in 1998, the brainchild of leading children's librarians working with Miranda McKearney and Anne Sarrag, children's development director. It now works with invaluable support from the main children's library networking groups and library supplier Books for Students. LaunchPad co-ordinates the national Summer Reading Challenge (see page 30), which, through libraries, encourages children to set themselves reading targets over the summer holidays, with medals as a reward for those who complete the challenge. The challenge has included an outreach programme that has brought the resources of libraries into, for example, children's care homes. Schools have begun to notice and appreciate the initiative's tangible effect on children's reading skills.

All corners of the community

LaunchPad has also run programmes supporting family reading, with partners ranging from Asda supermarkets (which trained staff to run storytelling sessions in the aisles) to hospitals. It has worked with prisoners in Nottingham on the Big Book Share, which has helped fathers in prison to be involved with their children's reading, through reading onto tapes and through special family visits. Under the Reading Agency this will be rolled out to a larger number of prisons.

The agency's most recent partnership is with communications company Orange. Together they have established Chatterbooks, a national network of reading groups in libraries for four to 12-years-olds.

And LaunchPad is in charge of a three-year scheme called Their Reading Futures, which sets out to raise the standards of libraries' work with children. This is also funded for the first year by a Wolfson Foundation grant. The scheme embraces a programme of training for librarians and a framework for evaluating children's "reader development".

Marrying skills

The Reading Partnership (TRP), also launched in 1998, is a small think tank concentrating on research, advocacy and evaluation. It aims to monitor the impact reading has on people's lives, and has had a great deal of success with projects that marry skills from different sectors, both public and private.

Among these is a partnership with Orange, which uses the Orange Prize for Fiction to encourage readers to experiment with new books, and a Wolfson-funded programme, Books & Business, that connects libraries and the commercial sector to support librarians in building relations with business through advice and training. The ways in which the libraries and business have worked together are many and varied, but include such ventures as putting reading groups into workplaces, at the offices of American Express, for example.

TRP is also behind the East Midlands-based Books Connect programme, which links libraries, arts organisations and museums. All this work will continue.

Sounder financial footing

In the past, LaunchPad received a short-term grant for salaries from a literary fund, and WWR and TRP received modest funding from Southern Arts and the Arts Council respectively. The merged organisation will benefit from revenue funding from the Arts Council of England, Southern Arts and Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals (formerly the Library Association), putting the new agency on a much sounder financial footing.

Funding for several new projects is in place and in some cases under negotiation. Resource (the Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries), for example, has given project funding for two years for partnerships, research, training and advocacy.

The Reading Agency will be a non-profit-making company and will have charitable status. Its key development workers will be Miranda McKearney, Anne Sarrag, Debbie Hicks and Ruth Harrison, with Penny Shapland, on secondment from Hertfordshire Libraries, as the new operations manager. Becca Wyatt will be handling much of the communications work. All of these people, and more, have made great contributions to the success of the original bodies.

Welcoming partners

The Reading Agency will not, however, have a rigid hierarchy. It offers networks and expertise to other people, and depends on co-operation and collaboration. Anyone with an interest in encouraging reading and spreading its social, emotional and intellectual benefits, is a welcome partner. From 1st July, the agency will have a Website at www.readingagency.org.uk, and can now be contacted at penny.shapland@readingagency.org.uk.

Ten new trustees have been appointed, including the chair, Martin Molloy, head of libraries and arts for Derbyshire and president of the Society of Chief Librarians, and deputy chair Viv Griffiths, recently retired acting director of leisure and culture at Birmingham City Council.

The other trustees are Liz Attenborough, former publisher and director of the National Year of Reading, Honor Wilson Fletcher from the Arts Council of England's literature panel and marketing director of Hodder Children's Books, writer Catherine Johnson, Liz Warnes, partner at Arthur Andersen, Neil McClelland, director of the National Literacy Trust, Richard Osmond, former personnel director of the Post Office, Sue Houghton, county librarian for West Sussex library service, and myself.

The board will also welcome four observers: Gary McKeone of the Arts Council, Sue Brown of CILIP, Kieran Phelan of Southern Arts and Sue Wilkinson of Resource. But around these people and the key workers is a vast network of librarians, and partners in the book industry, the media, business, government, education, local authorities and social services who make things happen.

Advantageous amalgamation

Other projects that will carry on into the future include Chatterbooks. The advantages of a single organisation are evident when you consider that Chatterbooks was a LaunchPad project and the Orange Prize for Fiction collaboration was the Reading Partnership's.

Meanwhile, a seminar is planned for the autumn about Public Lending Right and partnerships between libraries and the book trade, on the basis, as Ms McKearney puts it, that "we have the same common ground as we have for World Book Day [for which the existing agencies have put together a libraries package in the past]. We are all in the business of growing the market for reading, and we want to see how we can work together to achieve that."

Another date for the diary is the Books Connect national conference to be held in Nottingham on 7th November, which will focus on how best to link libraries, arts organisations and museums, using reading as a springboard.

As well as supporting masses of practical, grass roots work with readers, the Reading Agency will also engage in a good deal of advocacy and research to demonstrate the social contribution libraries can make. While anxious not to overstate its claims, the agency will track and pass on the evidence that libraries' work with readers can result in social change—from social inclusion to educational attainment, delivering lifelong learning skills, and improving quality of life.

Reading groups are hugely pleasurable. In addition, library reading groups can increase tolerance, build a sense of neighbourhood and a culture of citizenship. The skills and self-esteem of readers can be enhanced by giving them influence in libraries—the power to choose stock, for example, and even to handle budgets to buy books for their community.

Reaching out

Libraries can reach out to the housebound or to low-income families through partnerships with social services and supermarkets. They have great potential, through such projects as the Vital Link, for helping the one fifth of the nation's population who do not have basic literacy skills. And libraries share with the book trade the general benefit that reading is intellectually and emotionally empowering. It helps people make emotionally informed life choices.

The Reading Agency plans, too, to develop the links between public libraries and schools which are crucial to the National Literacy Strategy. There is already a big demand from primary schools for access to LaunchPad's Summer Reading Challenge, and from secondary schools for WWR's training and resources. A unified organisation will help to co-ordinate this strategy.

The agency, it seems, may be one of our most effective tools for making and maintaining readers, and its associates are full of optimism about its future. At the Hamlyn Foundation, which has just agreed a £90,000 grant for a new stage of the YouthBOOX project, Susan Blishen, education projects manager, says: "Singly and independently the three agencies have been very effective, and I think together they are likely to be even more effective. The new YouthBOOX project, which aims to improve basic literacy skills among disaffected young people, is a demonstration project, as so many of theirs are, and I think if it works it could affect a sea-change in the provision of books for young people. I feel very positive about this development."



Nicolette Jones is a freelance critic and journalist specialising in the book industry, and is the children's books reviewer for the SUNDAY TIMES.