Promoting reading 1
project stressed the importance of the library sp
ace itself for stimulating reading. The Läskonster project took inspiration from LesArt, a literature centre in Berlin which profiles itself as the only literature centre in Europe for children and young people (Hedenström & Lundgren 2011). “Literature centre” came to represent a number of different activities within the Läskonster project – everything from a caravan (the counties of Sörmland, Västmanland and Örebro) to mobile “story cupboards” (Uppsala County) or “digital literature centres” in the form of web-based writing workshops (Östergötland County). There is an obvious question in whether or not the public library is in fact already a literature centre, and Stockholm County chose to work on the basis of that idea. The final report described, among other things, a vision for a literature centre in Sandviken. In 2014, the literature centre Trampolin was opened in Sandviken, which was presented as Sweden’s first literature centre for children and young people. Room for children The design of new library spaces can be more or less grounded in research. In Rum för barn (Room for children – the Children’s library) at Kulturhuset (the House of Culture) in Stockholm for example, both the design of the space and the library’s activities are grounded in educational theory. In a conference paper presented by the Swedish School of Library and Information Science in Borås, researcher Lena Lundgren (2007) claimed that it is unusual for libraries to be based on educational theories in this way. Rachel van Riel argues that the physical presentation of the library is the area that is most in need of innovation and describes Rum för barn as a model worthy of imitation (Van Riel 2012). In 2003, the Swedish Library Association published a number of recommendations for the children’s and young people’s arm of the public library, based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and when Rum för barn was built in 2005, it was with the ambition of developing a library based on the child’s perspective throughout. For example, the traditional classification system was abandoned and the books are instead arranged in such a way that the children themselves can find them. In Rum för barn, the physical design of the space has been given more scope than is usual in more traditional libraries. Cubby houses, towers, staircases, doll houses and secret chests, an aquarium with piranhas and much more are part of the staging of this library space. The idea behind the Rum för barn was that play should provide a route to the books. How this has worked in practice was investigated in a Masters thesis by Linn Samuelsson (2007). Bookstocks at other locations There are many reasons for libraries to work with outreach activities, due to something as concrete as physical barriers for borrowers to get to the library, for example. Many public libraries therefore offer a home delivery service for books to all those who cannot get themselves to the library. Several research papers have been written about this form of outreach activity. For example, Helgesson (2006) has investigated these activities from the user perspective and Eriksson (2010) from the mediator perspective. But outreach activities might also be about overcoming cultural barriers. Librarians who have participated in projects involving sport and reading, for example, have indicated that they have developed better contact with young people they have met in the young peoples’ own space, rather than in the library. 88