Stock and reading promotion

CWF Library Services are committed to delivering The Universal Reading Offer, one of the national offers developed by Libraries Connected (formerly the Society of Chief Librarians) in partnership with The Reading Agency.

The Universal Reading Offer is a strategic planning framework which enables us to develop, deliver and promote reading services within libraries. The Reading Offer sets out what public libraries will deliver in order to provide a modern reading service within local communities.

It builds on public demand for a lively and engaging reading offer with reading groups, reading challenges, promotions and author events.

It aims to focus libraries’ attention and efforts on promoting key shared reading programmes and is supported by the reading calendar - a toolbox of reading programmes - and a raft of national partnerships.

CWF Library Services aim to:

• Promote its stock both to library members and to the wider public
• Give the public access to a wide range of stock including contemporary literature, first novels, novels in translation and multicultural writing
• Provide advice and guidance to individual customers in their reading choices, where required
• Promote diverse and wider reading
• Promote reading as a creative act
• Promote reading as part of the health and well-being agenda
• Promote reading as part of the wider lifelong learning agenda
• Maximise usage of our stock
• Encourage library membership and use
• Bring readers together for reading groups and literature events

The library service strives to:

• Provide well-maintained premises, which offer a welcoming and attractive environment for all
• Present stock in an attractive and accessible way with regular displays to stimulate and maintain interest and use
• Promote stock widely and in a variety of other ways – for example, booklists, bookmarks, author visits and other in-house promotional activities
• Participate in regional and national projects and initiatives to widen people’s reading choices and reading experiences: for example - shadowing major book prizes; participating in national opportunities brokered by The Reading Agency

Provide opportunities for readers to share their reading experiences and engage in reading as a creative act by:

• Hosting Reading Groups in libraries - the loan of reading group sets containing multiple copies of titles via the Reading Group Loan Service
• Using technology to promote books and reading, for example - via internet taster sessions, links to appropriate sites; digital bookshelves and magazines
• Readers’ recommendations being shared with other readers: for example - via book chains, review notice boards in libraries, “recommended” displays, library newsletters, library displays, or social media platforms
• Ensure that staff receive training in all aspects of work relating to reader development, so that they can interact confidently and effectively with all readers – existing and potential – and offer the best possible service.