Opening the Book was the first to:
Run a Festival of Reading as well as Writing
Opening the Book Festival created by Rachel Van Riel and Chris Meade with Sheffield Libraries delivered innovations that changed the face of literature festivals across the UK. Images show the Festival brochure, the programme advert and a commissioned poem about reading displayed on hoardings.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Design and deliver library staff training in reader development
First reader development workshops with library staff funded by the Arts Council.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Organise a national conference about Libraries, Literature and Reading
Opening the Book created Reading the Future for the Arts Council – a national seminar to consider the role of the public library in the promotion of contemporary literature. It is hailed as bringing about a sea-change in English public libraries. Images show the advance publicity, the programme and the report.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Try out the first surprise book in a bag
Project created in Creative Reading workshops with Gloucestershire Libraries.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Run Creative Reading workshops with library staff
All participants read books for these workshops and they were carefully chosen.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Make reader-centred booklists and promotions
Workshops nearly always resulted in lovely reader-centred projects. These lists from Oldham are an early example. The Danish promotion is later but also came from an Opening the Book workshop. What do men read? used real members of the library to show both the range of readers and the range of books.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Create reader development training with school library services
Opening the Book was the first to:
Start discussion of a Reader’s Charter
Workshopping The Rights of the Reader became a popular group topic in training sessions. Thinking about what readers have a right to expect from their libraries helps to work out how to meet their expectations.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Publish a book on how to develop your own reading
This book developed out of the Novel Approach project with Bradford Libraries, the first monthly group to try out the reader-centred approach to book discussion in libraries. Some library services supplied books to private reading groups but this was the first time Opening the Book supported library staff to run their own.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Create a wine and books event
Pontefract Library Readers' Group with Fiona Edwards, Reader-in-Residence, staged the first event to pair wine and books. The local supermarket provided the wines and a speaker to give a brief intro to each one. While everyone sipped, they were treated to a reading from a book from the same country. Books were then borrowed and the supermarket manager joined the library! This became the model for similar events elsewhere – a sophisticated matching for European literature promoters at a British Council conference, a relaxing evening with Moravian wines with Czech librarians.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Teach a course in creative reading
Reading between the Lines was written by Opening the Book for the Open College of the Arts. One of the first students to take it was Liz Attenborough who was Director of the National Year of Reading 1998-1999.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Design, manage and run a national library training programme in reader development
The 3-year Branching Out programme to create agents of change across the English library service embedded reader development in policies, job descriptions, collection management, promotions, staff training and reader-centred websites as well as developing the careers of the 33 key librarians who participated. It was followed by a 3-year programme in Wales and a 2-year programme in Scotland.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Build a website for library staff to share reader development resources
Branching Out was one of the first websites for library staff. Below is the early design and the updated version of 3 years later.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Create training in promoting Black British Literature
Opening the Book also offered the first training in libraries in promoting gay and lesbian writing; promoting poetry; working with visually impaired readers; promoting narrative non-fiction; and understanding reader behaviour (modelled on the work of Paco Underhill.) We continued to offer graphic promotions and stocklists to support these areas too.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Challenge current selection practice with Chief Librarians
This is just one example of the challenge brought by Opening the Book to senior managers as well as frontline staff.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Devise and run a national reader-centred promotion
Devised as part of Branching Out and made available to all libraries. Included promotional materials, stocklists, training days and a supporting website.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Create free national resources for reading groups
Waterstone’s commissioned Opening the Book to develop a Reading Group Toolbox. We worked with 20 different pilot reading groups and the Toolbox was distributed free to all libraries and prison libraries in England.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Devise and run national promotion of narrative non-fiction in libraries
The Mind’s Eye, a promotion of narrative non-fiction, got record loans across England and Scotland and showed that reader-centred approaches can be applied to non-fiction just as much as to fiction.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Manage a UK-wide programme of reader-centred promotions
After the success of publicly funded national promotions like Open Ticket and The Mind’s Eye, the funders told us that this work could pay for itself. Fortunately, Helen Thomas, ex-Marketing Director of Dillons, joined forces to create Opening the Book Promotions to take this forward. Our first three promotions continued to target under-served audiences rather than to plug bestsellers. And someone complained to the Advertising Standards Authority!
Opening the Book was the first to:
Publish and distribute a manual for reader development in prisons
Created with the first Readers-in-Residence prison programme, run by Opening the Book. Copies were distributed free to every prison in England.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Build a multilingual website for readers across Europe
Working with the British Centre for Literary Translation, Opening the Book set up a readers’ site for an EU network of cultural organisations.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Design and manufacture reader-centred display furniture
When it comes to book display, libraries are often offered imitations of retail furniture which just don’t work in a library context. Cardboard dumpbins quickly get shabby. Tim Waterstone claimed in an interview with Opening the Book that the flat table was his sole invention and the key to all his success. Book tables in bookshops are piled high with paperbacks in multiples, it doesn’t matter that you can only see the top covers as the books underneath are all the same title. When a few are taken, it is easy to top up with more copies from the neat storage cupboard underneath. But none of this works for libraries. We rarely have multiples of the same title – if we do, they are out on loan or on the Reservations shelf. We don’t need storage for more of the same, and we struggle to make flat tables work without multiples. The art of book display in a library is to make single individual titles look good together.
Opening the Book researched and prototyped for a year with one of the best bookstore designers to create a table that works for libraries. It is still the highest performing piece of furniture we know about.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Implement the idea of Quick Choice areas at the front of a library
Opening the Book pioneered the concept of Quick Choice, a collection of face-out paperbacks at the front of the library space, designed to offer an intriguing range to people who are looking to be tempted and can’t spend much time choosing. Quick Choice has had a direct impact on library performance wherever it has been introduced. Below is the very first at Blackburn Library.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Design and manufacture dynamic propeller shelving
From single pieces and small quick choice areas, Opening the Book moved on to design library interiors. We partnered with a major bookstore manufacturer but we knew we didn’t want boring straight rows of shelving. By this time we had absorbed the work of Paco Underhill and amassed lots of evidence of how library customers move through a space, how they turn, where they pause and linger. Our signature propeller shape turns library shelving stacks inside out like a fruit opening up to show what’s inside. Sketched by Richard Van Riel on a kitchen table, it was interpreted into the design below and installed for the first time at Mere Green Library in Birmingham where it can still be seen. The clever detail is that the curve is illusory – inside the bookshelves are actually straight. This makes them much easier to merchandise – curves will always look gappy – as well as less expensive.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Invent discovery layouts
A discovery layout applies reader-centred thinking to designing library interiors. How can we tempt customers to explore the space and the books? Banish straight rows of shelving and use flowing organic curves to bring books into the eyeline at every turn. To match the curves of the shelving, we created curved desks to offer friendly learning rather than a reminder of school.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Write a tool to measure the quality of adult fiction collections across public libraries
Opening the Book was commissioned to create a tool to measure the quality of adult fiction collections in libraries across England. This produced fantastic comparative data and sparked lots of debate as we used a reader-centred definition of quality as range. The Stock Quality Health Check was used from 2004-2007 by almost all library services in England, all services in Wales, some in Scotland and all in the Republic of Ireland. Originally issued on a CD, it progressed to its own website.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Deliver a reader-centred Ideas Pack to accompany a BBC series
This was the BBC’s first series to concentrate on readers and reading and they commissioned Opening the Book to create an accompanying pack for libraries. It had lots of good stuff – and yes, we did object to the title which seemed to us to be part of the problem of the image of reading and not a solution!
Opening the Book was the first to:
Design a secret reading hideaway for children
There are lots of versions of this in libraries now but we made the first 20 years ago!
Opening the Book was the first to:
Create reader websites to partner famous literature events
Colman Getty commissioned Opening the Book to make a website to help readers choose which of the Man Booker longlist and then the shortlist books they might like to try. A year later we were commissioned by Scottish Libraries and Information Commission and CILIP Scotland to create a website to take the Edinburgh International Book Festival themes to libraries and readers across Scotland. All 32 Scottish library authorities were involved.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Design and deliver online training in reader development
Used by 98% of English library services in the 3 years after launch, then by all Welsh and Irish services and most in Scotland.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Publish a manual on reader development in public libraries
This is the core text for reader-centred work in libraries and contains hundreds of project ideas from the Branching Out programme. It was supported by the Arts Council to enable free copies to go to every English library service. Plus it was translated into Norwegian.
Trailblaze reading for pleasure approach in primary school library design
Opening the Book created the BookSpace concept to change the presentation of reading in primary schools. BookSpace is now an independent company.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Run a state-wide online training programme in reader development in Australia
Completion of Frontline Victoria, a collaboration between Opening the Book and the State Library of Victoria, the Public Libraries Victoria Network and library services across the state to train 1000 Australian staff on Frontline. This is the most successful example of Opening the Book training ever. Apart from all the specific learning outcomes, nearly half of a sample of 229 graduates said that the course completely changed their view of their job and their library. Have you Frontlined it today passed into common speech across the State.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Pioneer reader-centred library designs in North America
Opening the Book set up a sister company based in Pennsylvania and started to work all over North America bringing our reader-centred thinking to entirely new audiences. You can read the case studies for a public library, a school library and children’s library here.
- Niagara-on-the-Lake Public Library
- A Dream Library for Baugher Elementary School
- Animating a Children’s Library Space
Opening the Book was the first to:
Integrate a hubs and pods reading offer
Modern libraries are often co-located with other services. Opening the Book has pioneered getting books and reading connected into other offers. Leeds developed mobile community hubs to go into under-served areas of the city where needs are greatest. Opening the Book designed the interiors to include print and digital resources, together with social and private areas.
Family bookcases are included in all the Community Hubs. The Wellbeing Pods have face-out book display which is easily changed for different uses.
Opening the Book was the first to:
Create and pilot an online book suggestions service with multiple library partners
Askforabook.com created a new website to offer readers free, personalised reading recommendations based on their current reading preferences. The methods of choosing and the way preferences were matched from carefully curated collections, resulted in a quality of experience which is not found on other free recommendation sites. Users were delighted with their suggestions and many found books they would not have thought of reading.
11 library services worked to test every aspect with us. Staff enthusiasm was great – especially for a new collections development course - but many found they didn’t have the time or the digital marketing capacity to reach large audiences. Following up to get the physical book to the user’s chosen branch was a step too far in services that were coping with unprecedented pressures on time and resources.
The result is a complete pivot in Phase 2 to use the same collection development and tech wizardry to offer automated suggestions which can be accessed instantly. Plans are afoot to take this forward as a national offer, where users could link through to every library catalogue, without services having to invest their own time and resources. Watch this space!
