Opening the Book was funded by the Arts Council to devise and deliver a programme of full-day workshops for library staff. These introduced a new reader-centred approach to promoting fiction and poetry, discussed specific titles and how to promote them (all staff read 4 books for the workshop) and planned some practical projects. The major issues raised by this training, most of which are still highly relevant, are listed in Rachel Van Riel's Report to Arts Council Literature Department on Creative Reading Training in Libraries.
Specific projects resulting from the workshops included many which have become common practice since:
- offering housebound readers a surprise book (this one came out of a story told by a workshop participant of a reader who was delivered the wrong books. Instead of complaining, the reader rang up to say she'd just had the best read she'd had in years as she'd got someone else's books by mistake!)
- running a 'guess who's reading what' display
- creating a display of places you read in
- placing slips to encourage reader comments inside books (this one came out of a workshop participant describing their job of rubbing out all the marks borrowers made inside books)
- running a parallel Booker sweepstake with readers making their own nominations and a social event with a large TV screen where the real and the parallel winners are announced
Birmingham Libraries ran the first major reader-centred city-wide promotion of reading under the title Why Read? funded by the Public Library Development Incentive Scheme. Opening the Book provided the training and worked with Chris Meade on the programme which included appointing Mary Cutler as the world's first reader-in-residence.
The first reader-centred posters