Task 3 - Concept of literacy and the role organisations play in promoting reading

Find some examples of the promotion of reading by different organisations - libraries, schools, bookshops, book councils, associations etc.

To fulfill this task, I revisited a couple of websites listed under Task 1, as well as trying to find a couple of new items. There is just so much out there promoting reading and books that sometimes you are spoiled for choice.

http://cbca.org.au/default.aspx

Children’s Book Council of Australia sponsors the Children’s Book of the Year and Book Week (including merchandise) each year, as well as having links to lots of author websites.

http://schoollibrarydisplays.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/blind-date-with-book.html

This blogs has lots of ideas for displays mostly aimed at schools, but occasionally features a gem like this from a public library. An intriguing way to get people to try reading something new.

http://www.getreading.com.au/book_list/australias-top-100-favourite-homegrown-reads/

This list has some great Australian classics as well as some more recent offerings and plenty of children’s titles. You could keep yourself very busy reading all of the books in the list.

http://www.booksellerandpublisher.com.au/

This website from the publishers of Books+Publishing magazine offer news about books and publishing as well as reviews and the chance to sign up for a free newsletter.

Has there been any research done on the success of any promotional activities or programmes? (perhaps an article or two in some scholarly journals)

I didn’t find this task as easy as I thought I would. There were not many recent articles that I could find, so I then looked for an authoritative website with research into literacy and reading.

https://www.eduweb.vic.gov.au/edulibrary/public/teachlearn/student/successfulivfull.pdf

This article looked promising and quite possibly does contain some good information, but it dates from 1999, so is not very current. It looks at various literacy programs run by 20 Victorian schools for year 7 students.

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/assets/0001/4066/London_Literacy_Champions_evaluation_report_v2.pdf

This research from the Literacy Trust in the UK looks at the success of the Literacy Champion program in 2012. The website also has lots of other research to do with literacy and reading.

Fulco, C., Lee, D. (2010). Reading like a demon: football heroes promoting reading to primary school students. APLIS, 23(4), 151-156. Retrieved from Ebsco database at

http://chislib.chisholm.vic.edu.au:2054/ehost/resultsadvanced?sid=fe1baa68-07b4-45ac-b7cf-4961f514896e%40sessionmgr198&vid=2&hid=126&bquery=reading+like+a+demon&bdata=JmRiPWx4aCZ0eXBlPTEmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl

This article describes a program run by Casey-Cardinia Library and the Melbourne Football Club to encourage boys to read more. Unfortunately the program does not seem to be still running, but the article also lists other research like Reading Stars in the UK and Boys, Blokes, Books & Bytes supported by the State library.