My Special Topics Paper is on Public Library Book Discussions/Clubs.
I found a great amount of information on innovative formats for book clubs that I hope to implement one day! Please let me know if you have any questions or comments.
Jessica Beal
S524
Special Topics Paper
Public Library Book
Discussion Groups
Reading can be a powerful experience encouraging strong
emotional connections. Nancy Pearl
states, “The joy and mystery of reading is that
each of us reads a different book
from everyone else…even when it's the same book. We bring all of our
life experiences to the reading of a book,
any book, and each person's
history is different from everyone else's” (as cited by Dempsey, 2011, p.
24). Dempsey offers, “One of the most profound
ways to experience any book is
to share feelings about it with others in a program libraries do especially
well: the book discussion group”
(p. 24). The book discussion provides a
natural way for each reader to share their own feelings and experiences with
others while enriching their own reading experience.
Public Library Book Discussions can
take on numerous iterations to cater to a variety of patrons and their
interests. The success of each group can depend on a variety of factors. Librarians and/or facilitators must keep in
mind helpful guidelines to ensure positive patron participation. Additionally, with the technology innovations
that have become commonplace in today’s society, there are now a great deal of
new and innovative possibilities to engage patrons in the book discussion
experience.
Book discussions among friends allow
individuals to engage in an activity that they find enjoyable. Not only are they able to have fun, but they
are also able to build upon an existing relationship by discussing thoughts,
feelings, and ideas on shared experience.
Why would individuals want to participate in this same activity with
strangers? Robertson states, “It provides a way to get to know
neighbors, discuss ideas relevant to life in the community, and to simply learn
more from one another than possible by reading a book alone in a vacuum” (2002,
p. 52).
Throughout the years, there have
been several well-known book discussion structures implemented by public
libraries. Let’s Talk About It, was
originally started by a group of friends during the 1970s in Vermont (p.
52). The Vermont Humanities Council
promoted this model, and the American Library Association began to engage with
this program in the 1980s (p. 52). “Libraries in 30 states presented
"Let's Talk About It" series throughout the 1980s, and the programs
have engaged an estimated 4 million people in the last two decades” (p.
52). In this series, participants read
five books related to a humanities theme, and are led by a humanities scholar
in a discussion.
The most
well-known and widely participated book discussion group is the One Book, One
Community program. “In 1998, Nancy Pearl
and Chris Higashi, librarians working in the Washington Center for the Book and
the Seattle Public Library, had a brainstorm…The expanded the book club concept
to encompass the entire city, launching a book discussion that incorporated all
the branches, bookstores, and even cultural organizations” (Dempsey, 2009, p. 19). Pearl was asked her opinion as to why these
types of community reading programs have become so popular. She offered:
Readers welcome the guidance provided by reading programs
and their preselected titles. The world of books is so big. You walk into a library
and no matter how small it is, it's bigger than you can ever read," she
said. Such programs also can provide a sense of unity and camaraderie. People
are aware of the fact that you can go through your whole day never talking to
anyone outside of your immediate family, and maybe not even that. ... They have
a hunger to connect with another person," she said. (Orr, 2006).
However, the Chicago
Public Library took this idea one step further and included the entire
community. This program brought about
the “One Book” label for future incarnations (Dempsey, 2009, p. 19). Palmer and Peterson state:
According to the
Center for the Book at the Library of Congress, the success of the Seattle
program has inspired other OBOC programs in more than 100 communities around
the country. As civic agencies with a
mandate to provide free books to all and promote reading, public libraries are
a natural place to breed programs such as OBOC, and, in fact, the majority of
OBOC programs are hosted by public libraries with cooperation and financial
assistance from other local groups (2007, p. 53).
The OBOC is a natural fit for local library’s wanting to engage their
patrons while connecting to community supporters, local businesses and
nonprofit agencies (p.57). These partnerships
foster a collaborative effort among community organizations in a highly visible
and engaging format. Not only does it
promote the library as a community resource, it also provides opportunities for
a community to come together for a common goal.
Dempsey states that the discussions created by OBOC, “offer
opportunities for readers to connect with one another in meaningful ways and,
in the process, learn more about their neighbors…These kinds of experiences
build community ownership of the library and elevate its presence as a curator
of those experiences” (2009, p. 22). In
the article, “And Then We Went to the Brewery”, Fuller and Sedo share the
following in reference to One Book One Community activities:
Some
activities, like book
discussions, assume that participants will read the book. Others do not, instead bringing people together for author
events, bus tours around places related to the book, craft workshops, and even campouts, canoe trips, and themed
cooking classes. Screenings of film adaptations, theatrical dramatizations, and
staged readings of extracts from the book
by professional actors or local celebrities are common to various iterations of
the model. We have also encountered wine tastings, group singing, visual art
projects, and pub crawls, none of which depended on anyone actually reading
anything, but all of which are predicated on the idea that a book can act as a cultural mediator or
a kind of engine for social gatherings (2014, p. 15).
However, it is also
important to remember the variety of traditional book discussion formats that
public libraries can engage in with their patrons. In his article, “Oprah and out”, Robertson
offers the following list:
·
Ongoing
groups or clubs that meet according to the participants' demographics (moms of
toddlers, seniors, teens, ethnicities) or the type of material being read
(science fiction, mystery, romance, nonfiction, poetry, history). These groups
may meet monthly, three times a year, or at other intervals, and are currently
the most numerous.
·
Thematic
or topical series, in the style of "Let's Talk About It," with or
without a scholar-leader or other facilitator.
·
One-time
discussion of works by visiting authors prior to their appearances.
·
Radio
call-in, such as that on ALA's "StoryLines America" regional
literature programs on public radio.
·
Discussion
and listening series, combined with filmed or audiotaped programs, such as
ALA's "Poets in Person" readings, produced by the Modem Poetry
Association.
·
Adjuncts
to other cultural programs, such as discussion of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
in conjunction with the current ALA traveling exhibition "Frankenstein:
Penetrating the Secrets of Nature" (AL, Dec. 2001, p. 8-10).
(2002, p. 53)
In the article, “The
Book Club Exploded”, Hoffert offers the following ideas for book club formats:
· Thematic approaches
to book discussions. Instead of
revolving around a single title, the discussion incorporates a theme over a
variety of titles. “Working by theme enriches the
conversation by allowing readers to cross genres and approach the discussion
from different perspectives, thus getting a better sense of an author, idea, or
culture” (2006, p. 35).
· Combine discussions
with a meal, specifically a title that reflects scenes from a book or an
author’s culture.
· Librarians working with groups of any
size can check out publisher web sites to see what authors might be available
for phone chats.
(2006, p. 35)
Book club kits provide
patrons with a resource that takes the book discussion experience outside of
the library encouraging patrons to become their own facilitator. Johnson County in Kansas utilizes the
following to ensure success in this program.
·
The
library's check-out period is two months with one renewal to allow numerous
groups access to titles.
·
Most
of the kits have corresponding large print and audio formats for each title
available in the library's collections.
·
Discussion
guides are included either in the book itself or are available on the library's
website.
·
The
library offers sessions on how to facilitate a book club, in addition to the
How to Start a Book Club link on its website and book discussion groups, led by
library staff, to join and from which to learn modeling.
(2008,
p. 30)
There is
also an understanding that, “The availability of discussion questions is key to
enabling book clubs to operate successfully and also differentiates the kits
from "a bag of books." Discussion questions can come from the
publisher, NoveList, Reading Group Guides, or other credible sources, but they
are too labor intensive to produce in-house” (p. 32).
Technology is not lessening the
importance of books or reading. E-book
sales account for only 34 percent of the market share in the US during 2013, “So the urge for people to be social
through their reading has not died in the face of technological change or as a
result of the recent shifts in the book
publishing and retailing industries” (Fuller and Sedo, 2014, p. 15). However, it is providing new opportunities for
library patrons to engage in the book club/discussion experience. Hoffert shares,
HarperCollins
has just begun creating podcasts that can be downloaded to an iPod from the
HarperPerennial.com web site and heard later. The original programming on these
podcasts includes author interviews and even musical scores, suggesting what
music was wafting in the background as the author wrote the book. "If a librarian is thinking
of suggesting a book, the
podcast can give a little more background," explains HarperPerennial
marketing director Amy Baker. "For reading groups themselves, it supplies
more fuel to fire the discussion." (2006, p. 37).
Jan
Lima, of Maine’s Bangor Public Library, offers a variety of ideas to
incorporate the Internet experience into a book discussion.
Not
Your Ordinary Book Group has a
unique structure: it meets in the physical library monthly and also connects
readers daily online through a blog. "We started with the intention of
pulling in patrons who have moved onto Internet forums back to the library,
while allowing our traditional readers to interact as well," says Lima (Dempsey,
2011, p. 24).
Members are
encouraged to participate, in person or online, regardless if they have read
the book or not. Lima states, "This
takes the pressure off our patrons if it's a busy month for them” (p. 24). To encourage ownership for the participants,
books are chosen by an online vote. The
online structure was not difficult to create. “Lima started with a free Google
email account and built from there. ‘From our email we created the blog, which
automatically supports Google Friend Connect within the blog, and Google Talk,
an IM service, is easily created in each blog follower's gmail account,’ she
says. ‘You don't need a server, domain name, or design program. Google provides
it all’” (p. 26). Several other
resources offer similar discussion platforms: LibraryThing and LibraryThing for
Libraries, Goodreads, and ChiliFresh.
When designing a book discussion
experience for patrons, it is essential to remember the purpose of the
interaction. It is important to maximize enlightenment without sacrificing
enjoyment. Barthelmess states, “We are
not gathered to refine a collection of disparate judgments into a polished,
unanimous opinion. Instead, we discuss
together in order to construct a conjoint assessment bigger than the sum of its
parts” (2014, p. 30). The book
discussion is meant to enrich the reading experience. McArdle and Trott add, “Reader interests in book discussions
offers libraries a lot of opportunities to interact with their reading
community and is a chance for libraries to reinforce their value to the
community, a useful thing in unsettled economic times” (2009, p. 122). Michele McGraw, Southdale Library, Hennepin County PL, MN. sums
it up perfectly when she stated, "People are looking for a chance to
connect, and the library's book club is a real community." (Hoffert,
2006, p. 37)
Works Cited
Barthelmess, T. (2014). Thom's Rules of
Order: Ten Tips for Good Book Discussion. Horn Book Magazine, 90(6),
28-32.
Beach, R., & Yussen, S. (2011).
Practices of Productive Adult Book Clubs. Journal Of Adolescent & Adult
Literacy, 55(2), 121-131.
Dempsey, B. (2011). The Evolving Book
Group. (Cover story). Library Journal, 136(14), 24-26.
Dempsey, B.
(2009). One Book, One Community: One Great Idea. Library Journal, 134(14),
19-22.
Fuller, D., & Rehberg Sedo, D.
(2014). And Then We Went to the Brewery. World Literature Today, 88(3/4),
14-18.
Hermes, V., Hile, M. A., & Frisbie,
J. L. (2008). Reviving literary discussion: Book club to go kits. Reference
& User Services Quarterly, 48(1), 30-34.
Hoffert, B. (2006). The Book Club
Exploded. Library Journal, 131(12), 34-37.
McArdle, M., & Trott, B. (2009).
Book Group Therapy: A Survey Reveals Some Truths about Why Some Book Groups
Work and Others May Need Some Time on the Couch. Reference & User
Services Quarterly, 49(2), 122-125.
Robertson, D. (2002). Oprah and out:
Libraries keep book clubs flourishing. American Libraries, 33(8), 52-53.
