Promoting reading 1
classic Volkswagen beetle or bug (officially, the
Volkswagen type 1 car), and here referred to the small size of the caravan. Inspired by similar projects in Denmark, this project used a similarly small mobile unit in the form of an old caravan, painted in a way that children would like. The project organisers called Bubblan a “mobile experiential centre”. Bubblan was one of the many ideas for literature centres that arose in the project Läskonster (The Arts of Reading), which was dealt with above. This project included visual storytelling, relay painting, magnetic poetry, the creation of animated films, book-themed dances, and reading aloud. The focus within the project was on storytelling in various forms, with a strong emphasis on children’s participation. The project aimed to reach children and young people who might otherwise not visit a library. During the first year of the project, its focus was a variety of storytelling activities with children aged 9 to 12 years; the second year of the project was devoted to children aged 13 to 18 years; and during the project’s last year, the target group was children from 0 to 6 years. High season for Bubblan activities was during the summer, when the caravan visited youth festivals and public housing apartment block areas (miljonprogram areas). Bubblan was also presented at the children’s book fair in Bologna, which is the world’s biggest children’s book fair. Bubblan – berättelser på väg was funded by the Swedish Arts Council and evaluated externally by Eva Bergstedt (2012), a freelance journalist who also holds a Masters in Library and Information Science (see also Eriksson 2013). The evaluation was conducted using questionnaires and interviews addressed to library staff, library managers, and collaborators. However, the children’s own experiences of the project have not been evaluated, despite the project’s strong emphasis on children’s participation in other respects. Reaching out to children and young people who otherwise might not visit a library was clear as one of the goals of the project, and it would have been useful to know something about the extent to which that goal was achieved. Worth mentioning in terms of research into similar reading promotion efforts using mobile library activities for children is the UK thesis The promotion of reading on children’s mobile libraries in the United Kingdom (Bamkin 2012). This doctoral thesis showed, among other things, that mobile children’s libraries in the UK reach out to children who do not come into contact with books in other ways, and that the mobile library provides quite a different experience to the bricks-and-mortar library. Communal laundry libraries, cloakroom libraries and other alternative lending activities One of the alternative lending activities that libraries have developed is the communal laundry library. Communal laundry libraries are found in the form of smaller spontaneous libraries, in other words a collection of books that has been placed by private initiative in a shared community or communal laundry room; and in larger, organised forms in collaboration with public libraries and other actors. For example, in Smedjebacken, the communal laundry library has been set up in cooperation with ABF Dala Finnmark, the tenants’ association Malmen and the Dalarna County Library, with funding from the Swedish Arts Council. The communal laundry library is a room connected to the laundry room where neighbours can socialise and share their reading experiences. The public library is responsible for the selection of books and supplies the room with a stock of current, quality fiction and non-fiction, audiobooks and picture books. In connection with 94