Promoting reading 1
between the Stockholm Regional Library, Studieför
bundet Vuxenskolan (an adult education association), MTM, and eight public libraries in the county of Stockholm. The report for the first year of the project listed 55 trained reading reps (Nygren 2013). There have been several similar projects for the training of reading reps for different target groups. For example, the project Läslust i Värmland (Reading enjoyment in Värmland), which ran from 2001–2003, aimed to make reading with the reading rep a natural part of everyday life for people with intellectual disabilities and/or autism. The project was a collaboration between the Swedish National Association for Persons with Intellectual Disability (FUB), the Autism association (now the Autism and Asperger Association) in Sweden, Studieförbundet Vuxenskolan, the County Library and Region Värmland, what was then The Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille (now MTM), and MTM (Torvaldsdotter 2003). Availability via digital media E-books It is easy to see the reading promotion potential in the enhanced availability and many reading options that have arisen with the advent of smartphones and tablets. It is just as easy to see in the same technology a potential threat to reading. In the light of several studies of boys’ and girls’ preferences regarding reading on a screen, the Riksdag report En bok är en bok är en bok? – en fördjupningsstudie av e-böckerna idag (A book is a book is a book? – an in-depth study of e-books today) (2013) makes a cautious assumption about the reading promotion potential of the e-book for boys. In the summary of the research on the impact of e-books on reading motivation and literacy, made on behalf of the National Literacy Trust (Picton 2014), the conclusion is drawn that it is too optimistic to assume that e-books are a path to reading for people who do not read printed books. On the other hand, e-books, just like printed books, can be used in reading promotion efforts. Reader surveys indicate that reading e-books and paper books is not a matter of either/ or. The majority of the research on children’s and adolescents’ on-screen reading has so far focused on its impact on literacy. There is much more to know about the impact of e-books on attitudes to reading and reading motivation. A study that compared students’ reading motivation when reading paper books and when reading e-books, respectively, has indicated that the content is more important for reading motivation among children and young people than the format per se. However, students tended to prefer e-books when they were offered a greater number of books to choose from and the option to choose their own e-books (Jones & Brown 2011). Most likely, the reading potential of the e-book lies in the possibility of making greater quantities of literature available, which in turn permits choice and thus provides motivation. Talking books A talking book is a recorded, narrated version of a published book, and is intended for those with reading impairments. Talking books are produced in Sweden by the Swedish Agency for Accessible Media (MTM), which was previously named the Swedish Library of Talking Books and Braille. MTM works to ensure that individuals with reading impairments are offered literature in a form that is accessible to them, and is also tasked with making available, producing and distributing easy-to-read literature to the extent that 96