As part of their Reading for Pleasure campaign, the Publishers’ Association are calling upon book-lovers to become Reading Ambassadors. As a Reading Ambassador, your role would be to promote reading for pleasure in your community.
The Publishers’ Association have suggested some great ideas for how you might go about this, for example by writing or drawing about the book you’re reading and sharing your creations on social media, volunteering at reading time at your local school and volunteering at your local library. We’ve come up with a few library-related suggestions ourselves, which we hope will inspire you to become a Reading Ambassador.
Tag your local library on social media
We love to interact with our customers on social media, so don’t be shy about commenting on our Facebook posts or mentioning us on Twitter. Perhaps you’ve spent a pleasant morning or afternoon in your local library, met like-minded people at a library book group, or enjoyed attending one of our special events. If you took pictures, even better - we’d love to see and share them!
By tagging us on social media, you’re telling other people: libraries are a great place to get lost in, or find out more about, a book.
Tell the world about your library hauls
Stretched your borrowing limit as far as it can go? Take a picture of your book pile and show the world what you’re reading now and next. You could even go a step further and blog or vlog about why you chose them and what you think of them.
Again, we’d love for you to tag us on social media to spread the word to other people about the appeal of reading for pleasure and the great books on offer at the library.
Buy from, donate to, or volunteer at library book sales
Our libraries hold regular sales of donated books and outdated library books. If you’ve got some old books you don’t want any more, why not donate to your local library’s next sale? Someone could pick up an old book of yours they absolutely love, possibly inspiring them to read more books by that author or in that genre, and maybe they’ll credit the library online for their great find.
By buying from a library sale, you can support your library and find new books to recommend to other people. You could also help to organise and run a book sale, which leads us neatly on to our next activity…
Get involved with your local library’s Friends group
Library book sales, and other activities, are often organised by the Friends of the library. All 44 of our libraries have Friends groups, who have a say in the running and development of their branches. You might end up helping organise an event that attracts more people to borrow books from the library, or running the Friends group’s social media, bringing the library’s offerings to the attention of more local people.
Bring your friends to a library event
Looking for new ways to introduce your friends to new authors, books and genres? They might be inspired by seeing an author give a talk at a library. If you want to go to an author’s talk, try to persuade as many of your friends as possible to come with you. It’ll make for a ‘novel’ evening out, and is bound to give you plenty to discuss afterwards.
We hope our ideas have inspired some of you to become Reading Ambassadors. Maybe you’ve come up with even more ideas of what you could do to promote reading for pleasure in your local community!