We’re doing something different this blog, and doing a deep dive of The Bookseller archive to find the relevant articles they have about libraries. Over the past few weeks, there have been a number of interesting articles about libraries and our reading habits.
Looking over the articles, we can see that there are two interesting issues happening in the US and the UK; in the US, discussions are happening around book bans and libraries not being able to stock certain books about certain topics. https://www.ala.org/bbooks provides a lot of resources about the books that are banned and how they can be accessed, as well as some stats about censorship across the 50 states. Alternatively, in the UK we are struggling with a reading draught; few people, especially younger people, are reading for pleasure, which is in turn hurting their literacy and education. I suspect there are a lot of reasons that this is the case, from continued pandemic fallout to an increased interest in social media. Our children’s literacy has gotten so bad that there have been open letters to the government, urging them to put things in place to encourage students and young people to read for pleasure and not just for education. I believe that changing up the literature being taught to the students would help this issue.
One of the great things that has come out of libraries is the book vending machines funded by Penguin. I think this is a fantastic and innovative way of getting children involved in reading, and provides on-the-go reading material. I hope that more schools are able to get their hands on these vending machines, and maybe booksellers and local libraries can use them too! They would be an amazing tool to reach under-educated and under-represented communities who don’t have access to large reading lists.
On the topic of library improvement, CILIP provided a ‘future toolkit’ to get libraries thinking about how they can keep up with the industry and with our ever changing reading and living habits. I used to love going to the library as a child, participating in the summer reading challenges and taking out as many books as I could. There is nostalgia with these familiar (and potentially outdated) features of the library, but moving with the time is crucial if we are to keep the libraries we love open.
https://www.thebookseller.com/news/cilip-launches-future-libraries-report-and-toolkit
Those a just a few of my favourite articles from The Bookseller about libraries – what would you like to read about next?
