Since beginning to get involved
in National Libraries Day last year, at University of Bedfordshire Library we have
been looking at finding ways to join in with other national events which would
be suitably appropriate and engaging to our students. This year we decided to
apply as an institutional giver to hand out free books for World Book Night,
and we were lucky enough to receive copies of two titles to distribute.
We decided that this would be
part of a wider and more long-term campaign to promote and encourage the health
and wellbeing benefits of reading for pleasure. As we stated in our application
to hand out books, we spend a lot of time pushing the importance of academic
reading – reading around your subject etc. – but given that we as a university
are concerned about student wellbeing and ensuring that our students remain
happy and healthy throughout their time here, we felt that we should be
promoting the ways in which reading for pleasure can help. We therefore decided
to also use World Book Night to launch a blog where staff and students can share
their recommendations for books to read and their experiences of and feelings
on reading in a non-academic sense.
Deciding where to hand the books
out was a challenge. The aim of World Book Night is to distribute books to
people who do not ordinarily read, so at first we thought we would go to a
space outside of the library/LRC, perhaps the Student Union (SU). However,
having decided to run our event during the evening, we considered where the
students would actually be at 6pm on a Thursday in the run-up to final
deadlines and exams, and realised that they would be in the library spaces, so
we decided to use these. We felt that we were still likely to catch students
who weren’t readers, as their presence in the library indicated only that they
were doing academic reading, not necessarily any other kind.
We did not receive as many books
as perhaps we had hoped – only two sets of eighteen, meaning nine of each title
at each campus where we were giving – due to The Reading Agency wanting to
allow as many institutions as possible to give out books. Therefore we decided
to run a book swap at the same time.
The event went really well at
both campuses. Despite having deadlines looming, the students we encountered
gave a positive response, with most of them seeming pleased to be offered a
book and engaging with the titles, wanting to know what they were about and
which to choose. We didn’t get many book swap donations on the night, but had
had a few come in during the days before, so we had plenty of other books to
offer too, which the students were keen to browse and pick from. Several said
that it would be a welcome distraction from the stress they were under at the
moment – a good point at which we could share some statistics on the health benefits of
reading for pleasure – while others were looking forward to reading their free
book once they were finished with their studies for the year.
We would have liked to have run
some events or activities for World Book Night in addition to the giveaway, and
did discuss this, but the main problem with this idea is the time of year – our
students are too busy with their assignments, dissertations and revision to be
able to engage with anything else and so we felt that we would not get
sufficient attendance for anything. However, given the positive response to the
book hand-out, we felt that our first foray into World Book Night was successful,
most particularly in the context of the time of year.
We are continuing to add to our
reading blog, and will think about other activities and events that we could
run to promote the health and wellbeing benefits of reading for pleasure.
