The vital thread – paint job, or sustainable future?

Reading changes lives – and libraries are central to the process of promoting and fostering reading.  That was the key message, for me, of the Conference held on 24 October to presage the National Year of Reading 2008 (NYR) [see www.literacytrust.org.uk/NYR/index.html] with Ministerial blessing from the government’s Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF).

Secretary of State Ed Balls recognised the transformation which has taken place in many public libraries – a point also emphasised by Tony Durcan, current President of the Society of Chief Librarians.  Schools Minister Jim Knight recognised that a national campaign to promote reading needs to reach out beyond families, schools and communities to engage with colleges, businesses, workplaces, and a whole range of other reading contexts (Prisons! demanded John Bird, co-founder of the Big Issue).

It was left to your correspondent to point out from the floor that there is one agency which covers all of these diverse contexts – one agency for which reading (in print or through technology) is core business: libraries.  Would NYR be engaging just with public libraries, I asked, or with the whole library (and information) community?  I set up the goal-scoring opportunity, knowing that Jonathan Douglas (Director of the National Literacy Trust which leads the consortium charged with delivering NYR) would put the ball firmly into the back of the net.  All libraries, responded Jonathan, embarking on an enthusiastic tour of the contribution which can be made to NYR by academic libraries and workplace libraries as well as public and school libraries.  “Interesting”, murmured Jim Knight as I pointed out that public libraries comprise only 20 percent of the totality of the nation’s libraries.  So, come on colleagues!  Public and school libraries will have a vital role in delivering the aspirations of NYR – but all libraries will have their part to play.

For me, three key issues came out of the conference (why is it always three?  I’ll reflect on that question in a future blog moment).  First, there’s a huge diversity of people and agencies with a stake in reading – how will this constellation of stakeholders come together into the coherent framework which Jim Knight wants to see?  The answer has to be by co-ordination at local level through Local Authorities and the joint-agency community planning process, with local co-ordinators employed, empowered and enabled to break down barriers and get people and agencies working together: far from an easy task.

Second (as Honor Wilson-Fletcher, newly appointed NYR Project Director, demonstrated) all the people at the conference were part of that charmed circle of people who have a natural affinity with reading – all doubtless with a house full of books at home.  How do we go beyond that charmed circle to engage with all those people who don’t have a house full of books, who don’t use libraries, who think that reading is “not for the likes of us”?  Honor hinted at an important part of the answer – finding and using the emotions and activities which matter to people in these “hard to reach” groups.  Lots more work needed here – but the poster of Monty Panesar as a reading champion showed us one way forward.

And third?  Well, a number of speakers talked about the NYR delivering a sustainable legacy.  But how is that to be done?  And how will be know if it has been done?  Sometimes glossy national initiatives seem like a bright new coat of paint slapped on to a shabby old building to cover up the crumbling brickwork – but NYR is potentially much more important than that.  The NYR rhetoric of enthusiastic aspiration needs to be matched by an NYR reality of effective delivery – and that needs investment in the brickwork as well as the new coat of paint.  Miranda McKearney (Director of the Reading Agency) enthused that Ed Balls and DCSF really “get it” about libraries.  Well, let’s hope that other government departments (DIUS, DCMS, DCLG etc, etc) also “get it” – and understand that the crumbling brickwork of a library service under threat of closures and cutbacks needs core investment if NYR is to be sustained into something more than a glossy but temporary spurt of enthusiasm.

Mick Waters (Curriculum Director of the Qualifications and Curriculum Agency) spoke of teachers and librarians weaving a magic tapestry with reading as the vital thread running through the warp and weft of learning.  Fine words.  But if NYR is to get more people doing more reading is a sustained way, then one challenge for NYR is to bring central and local government together in a partnership to provide a professional standard of library service in all our communities.  That’s certainly a message I’ll be emphasising in my forthcoming meeting with Libraries Minister, Margaret Hodge.

In the meantime, check out the information about NYR on the web, www.yearofreading.org.uk, and think about ways in which your library or information service – whatever your sector – can make a contribution.  And then let the NYR people know at nyr@literacytrust.org.uk.