Promoting reading 1
booktalks show significant increases in circulati
on, but, on the other hand, booktalks have no appreciable effect on attitudes to reading. Filmed booktalks, book trailers, book blogs and other digital book tips The nature of booktalks has changed over time, in particular as a result of technological innovations of various kinds. The tech-savvy booktalker: a guide for 21st-century educators (Keane & Mr Carey Cavanaugh 2009) is a book that gives examples of how today’s booktalkers utilise everything from scanners and digital cameras to computer programs such as PowerPoint and iMovie, websites like YouTube and Amazon, etc. A Swedish project that embraced the potential of digital development to bring booktalks up-to-date was Crossover, which ran from 2009 –2010 as a collaboration between the Southeast County library and the Regional Library in Kalmar. As part of the project, booktalks were filmed and published on YouTube. Digital book presentations also exist in the form of book trailers, in other words, short films featuring books visually in a format similar to the movie trailer. Book trailers often include music and images designed to create a certain atmosphere around the featured book and may also contain spoken dialogue. On YouTube, book trailers are produced by both amateurs and professionals. The Swedish website boktrailer.se features short films on current books and authors from Swedish publishers. The American web portal Digital Book Talk offers book trailers with amateur actors. This website provides access to training materials for registered booktalkers to produce and upload their own book trailers. This kind of book trailer is generally round 2–3 minutes long. The effects of Digital Book Talk have been investigated in the context of a research project by Gunter & Kenny (2008), who stress the potential of this activity to improve attitudes to reading among reluctant readers in the category of “digital natives”, i.e. those who have grown up in an age when computers and the Internet were already a substantial part of society. For research into the use of digital technology in connection with booktalks and similar reading promotion methods, see also the article Rethinking Reading Promotion: Old School Meets Technology (Chance & Lesesne 2012). Åse Kristine Tveit (2004) distinguishes four elements that a reading advisory published on the Internt ought to include: an interesting introduction, a brief description of the main characters, a brief description of the action/themes and genre where appropriate, and facts about the book in the form of author, title, publishers, year of publication and the like. Among the many book blogs and other websites that offer book tips, Barnens bibliotek (Children’s library), is worth mentioning – a digital initiative for children offering tips on books to read and help with finding books, where children can also add their own favourite books. This site is also available as an app. A blog that has specifically focused on adolescents between 10 and 20 years of age is Bokfreak.se (book freak). Another book blog that has attracted a lot of attention, not least because of its name, is bokhora.se (book whore), which publishes book reviews of both old and new literature, divided into genres such as chick lit, crime novels, poetry, etc., and themes such as children’s book week or Father’s Day. This blog also presents nonfiction books such as cookery books and biographies, and regularly features interviews with authors. The blog also contains the radio podcast programme bokpodden (the book podcast). 64