Adult Reading BINGO

After a successful few years offering a BINGO reading encouragement program for youth, my library is now offering an adult reading encouragement program.  While it is important that readers' advisory staff and services attend to those who are already reading, it is a worthwhile activity to encourage people to read or to read outside of their regular comfort zone.

Random House continues to offer all of the supplies needed to begin offering this kind of program.    This is program features all Canadian content so it will be a challenge for readers who may not be familiar with national offerings.

For our program, we encourage readers to complete one line of BINGO squares to receive a bookmark.  Bookmarks were purchased from the Ontario Library Association Store and the selections were actual American Library Association designs.  We offer 4 different prize levels for youth but only the bookmark for one line of adult reading and a book for the completion of the full adult card.  Books have been provided from donations.

This program is more labour-intensive as staff have developed lists of books to meet the requirements of each square and specialty bookmarks created to indicate what square the book relates to.  We have created printed cards where readers can keep track of their reading.

We are promoting the program within the library on two different displays and I think we will have to do some more internal marketing to get more participants.  So far, we haven't given away any bookmark or book prizes but it does take adults longer to read than teens!

http://www.retreatbyrandomhouse.ca/2015/01/reading-bingo-challenge-2015/