Biblo.dk is owned and created by the Danish public libraries. This is a national online community for tweens aged 7-14 (target group 8-12), where the children’s own content is in the spotlight. A main focus of biblo.dk is to create campaigns and competitions which initiate a passion for reading.

Children like to be inspired by other children.

On biblo.dk they can create and read book reviews of other children. Biblo.dk’s biggest reading campaign is called “Sommerbogen” (Summer Book), and it is performed through summer holidays, when you would expect the children’s reading to decrease, due to absence of a teacher to initiate their reading. But in 2018, no less than 16,000 book reviews were created during the summer.

School teachers and school librarians have sought after something similar but anchored at school and not during vacations. This has led to “Vinterbogen” (Winter Book) which was arranged for the first time in January and February 2019. In this campaign biblo.dk experimented with sharing a reading experience, e.g. a book cover or a painting of their favorite character from a book. This democratizes reading, because even a weaker reader finds it easy to participate on the same level as the better readers in the class. Even though this campaign was initially a pilot project, it reached the same level of engagement as the well tested Sommerbogen. This is a sign that the campaign could be a way for future initiatives for this target group initiating the passion for reading.

Author: Anne Sofie Cramer, Roskilde Bibliotekerne, Denmark

E-Mail: annesofiecr@roskilde.dk