Promoting reading 1
Idrett og Lesing (Sport and Reading) aimed to int
egrate the reading into Norwegian sports contexts. The project ran for three years and was financed by the Norwegian Archive, Library and Museum Authority and the Arts Council Norway. The Idrett og Lesing project was initiated by Foreningen !les, an organisation inspired by similar organisations such as Läsrörelsen in Sweden, Stiftung Lesen in Germany and the National Literacy Trust in the UK and working to promote reading in Norway. The target group for the Idrett og Lesing project was young people aged 13–19 years. The project involved sportsmen and women at all levels from a variety of sports. All sports clubs included in the project received a large bag containing a varying selection of books. One of the aims of the Idrett og Lesing project was to encourage athletes to integrate reading into their daily lives, particularly during rest periods and when travelling, as a form of relaxation and mental training. The Idrett og Lesing project entailed librarians visiting sports clubs before and after training sessions. The bag full of books helped to build up a “changing room library”, and the librarian also provided information about various books. Working with sports organisations and the Norwegian Writers’ Union, librarians also offered to visit clubs together prominent athletes and authors with an interest in sport. During the Olympic Games in China in 2008, Foreningen !les delivered bags full of books to Norwegian athletes. The Idrett og Lesing project was divided into three parts: the book bench, elite/national team and recreational sport. The evaluation of the pilot project has reported good results, including that 76 per cent of the sportsmen and women who participated in the project have read the books they received in the book bag. One of the conclusions from the evaluation was that visits by authors and athletes were an important part of the project. In addition to the direct contact with the athletes, they added their book tips on a website linked to the project. The main objective of Idrett og Lesing was to make children and young people who are very engaged in sports and elite athletes to become more interested and engaged in reading. Among the methods used was “changing room librarians”, book bags, visits by authors and/or sportsmen and women, and the recruitment of elite athletes as reading role models. By profiling famous elite athletes as readers, the project aimed to convey to children active in sports that sport and reading is a “healthy and good combination” (Helvig 2007). The evaluation for the entire project lists, for example, how many books were borrowed from the book bags, how often the book bags accompanied training or travel, and the degree to which the activity helped to raise interest in literature and reading (Burås Storø 2008). The evaluation also investigated how much the project’s website had been used during the project period. Reading role models in the form of elite athletes stand out in the report as important for getting young people interested in sport engaged in reading. Reading Stars Other reading promotion activities that have combined sport with reading have profiled sports stars as reading role models. For example, the Riksidrottsmuseet (the Swedish National Sports Museum) exhibition on the theme of reading athletes drew attention to a number of famous and successful athletes with an interest in reading. The exhibition, which was called Läsning är också en sport (Reading is also a sport) was evaluated by 57