Promoting reading 1
tion efforts of libraries. Other surveys of readi
ng promotion activities include the book Ett läsande Norden: bokprat, barnbokskaravaner och lässtafetter (A Reading Scandinavia: booktalk, children’s book vans and reading relays) Rönström (2000), a study of reading stimulation activities in collaborations between libraries and schools in the Nordic countries. The study Læs !les läs: læsevaner og børnebogskampagner i Norden (Read: reading habits and children’s book campaigns in the Nordic Region) (Øster 2004) examined reading habits and reading promotion initiatives in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. The book Som fisken i vattnet – Barnens väg till språk och läsande (Like pigs in mud – Children’s paths to language and reading) (Wilhelmsson 2000) describes 46 reading promotion projects in Sweden based on the categories “Reading projects for younger children”, “Reading projects for older children and adolescents”, “IT projects” and “Environments conducive to reading”. There are also books of an inspirational nature that report reading promotion projects. The book Läsprojekt. Inspirationsbok för förskola, skola och bibliotek (Reading projects. Inspiration book for preschool, schools and libraries) (2007) presents 35 projects at Swedish schools and libraries. In his book Den goda boken. Samtida föreställningar om litteratur och läsning (The good book: Contemporary ideas about literature and reading) (2012), Magnus Persson, a researcher who has analysed reading promotion activities from a cultural perspective, looked at Läsrörelsen’s partnership with McDonalds for example. Persson did not evaluate the campaign’s results but scrutinized Läsrörelsen’s various discourses on reading from a critical perspective. In the study Synen på skönlitteratur för vuxna på svenska folkbibliotek (Attitudes to fiction for adults at Swedish public libraries) (Ehrenberg et al. 2013), Persson analysed a number of reading promotion library projects from similar perspectives. Persson is of the opinion that Sweden, unlike our neighbour, Norway, largely lacks relevant, up-to-date research to rely on for conscious strategic efforts concerning literature mediation at libraries. Reading promotion – or reading stimulation as it is also called – is a relatively common topic for Swedish theses at the Bachelors and Masters levels, especially in the field of library and information science. In only the last ten or fifteen years, hundreds of Swedish Masters theses have been written on reading promotion activities. The higher education institutions and universities that offer courses in the subject within Sweden are the Swedish School of Library and Information Science in Borås (BHS), Lund University, Umeå University, Uppsala University and Linnaeus University. Theses on reading promotion are also produced in other academic disciplines. This applies in particular to the discipline of pedagogy, where reading promotion is often studied from a classroom perspective. The examples of theses in this review show trends in different areas and have not been selected primarily on the basis of any academic quality criteria. Reading promotion methods and evaluations The reading promotion methods used in children’s libraries that Sandin (2011) identifies include holding story-time sessions and song sessions for small children, the development of reference interviews to be able to respond to children’s questions, book games, book clubs, book conversations and booktalk, and activities that offer multilingual children stories in different languages. Reading promotion efforts also include the development of methods to respond to children in need of adapted media such as 15