Approximately 50 organizations took part in the Center for the Book's annual reading promotion partners' "idea exchange" on March 13.
Center for the Book program specialist Anne Boni (center) and Sally Reed of Friends of Libraries U.S.A. talk with Tom Phelps from the National Endowment for the Humanities; Suzanne Barchers (left) of the Weekly Reader Corporation and the Center for the Book's Pat White.
In addition to sharing information about their reading and literacy promotion projects, the partners discussed their participation in the Let's Read America Pavilion I at the 2002 National Book Festival. Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole provided a briefing about plans for the pavilion at the 2003 Festival. Cole also encouraged organizations present to develop partnerships among themselves, citing examples of such cooperative programs as "Strengthening Communities Through the Art of Poetry," a joint effort of two partners, the Favorite Poem Project and KIDSNET.
Center for the Book Director John Cole makes a point to Maxie Hollingworth from Turning the Page, an organization that directs its reading promotion efforts towards public schools; John Cole with Louise Anderson of the Lutheran Church Library Association and Dale Miller of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries; at the 2002 National Book Festival, the American Institute for the Blind, a reading promotion partner, arranged for a meeting between John Vickers, age 7, of Athens, Texas, and his hero, author Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind man to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
The national reading promotion partners' program started in 1997 with the center's "The Year of the Young Reader" national reading promotion campaign. In 1994, the first "idea exchange" focused on ideas to promote "Books Change Lives," the 1993-1994 campaign.
The Center for the Book cooperates with its partners in a variety of ways, usually through joint projects or by sharing reading and literacy promotion themes and publicity. Joint activities often focus on specific celebrations that bring like-minded partners together, such as the National Education Association's Read Across America Day, and International Literacy Day, an annual celebration led by the International Reading Association and the International Literacy Network; and the National Book Festival.
Directory information about the center's national reading promotion partners and their activities is available through the center's Web site (www.loc.gov/cfbook). The site also includes comparable information and whenever possible links to the Web sites of the center's affiliates in 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, and many other national and international organizations concerned with promoting books, reading, literacy, and libraries. More than 300 organizations around the world are included.
More than 60 of the Center for the Book's national reading promotion partners publicized their programs in one of two Let's Read America Pavilions at the 2002 National Book Festival; Linda Lancaster (left) of First Book exchanges ideas with Ellen Moore of the Junior League of Washington
