Big Read, Big ROI

Zora Neale Hurston, Dashiell Hammett, Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy: they aren't just classic authors you should have read. In the hands of libraries and their partners, deployed communitywide with the support of the Big Read, they and many other great writers are becoming agents of change.

In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released a grim report on the state of literary reading in America. “Reading at Risk” (www.nea.gov/pub/ReadingAtRisk.pdf) detailed a dramatic decline in recreational reading across all segments of the American population—young and old, black, brown, and white. It also included the projected fallout from the trend. Recreational readers are more engaged in their communities. They're more likely to vote, attend a museum or sporting event, and volunteer, and, go figure, they live longer...an average of seven years. “The decline in reading, therefore,” writes NEA chair Dana Gioia in his introduction, “parallels a larger retreat from participation in civic and cultural life. The long-term implications of this study not only affect literature but all the arts—as well as social activities such as volunteerism, philanthropy, and even political engagement.”

In short, eliminate reading and the future is a Fahrenheit 451–like world drained of culture.

Answers to this alarm were in short supply. However, at work in the background was a raft of one book—one community reading programs that were capturing citizen interest and earning libraries more prominence at home. NEA seized the trend and by 2006 was ready to launch the Big Read (www.neabigread.org), in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and Arts Midwest. The plan, designed to provide grants and other support to libraries for one-month reading programs based on the Big Read's featured titles, needed to board the community reading bandwagon successfully. Year one piloted with ten communities and four literary classics.

Less than three years later, the Big Read has a library of 27 literary titles to choose from, with 372 host towns. As the NEA prepares for its 2009 grant cycle, the project has not only delivered on its promise to get communities reading but has become a bona fide transformational tool for libraries, building capacity for community partnerships and extension of the library's most trusted brand attribute: quality books and reading.

It was the partnership aspect of the Big Read that drew IMLS as a significant ally. “As libraries struggle to stay up to par in the 21st century, our minds stray to technology. But, collaboration...that's the 21st-century skill that's needed most,” says Mary Chute, deputy director of library services at IMLS.

Because the Big Read requires both partnership and a library presence, it's naturally drawing libraries into the community. Chute feels the Big Read is an ideal training ground for learning how to be a good partner. It trades on libraries' and librarians' most finely honed skill—expertise in books—and applies it in the locality. “With the Big Read, we're investing in libraries' seat at the community table,” says Chute. “This isn't a one-shot deal. They develop the skills they need, and they will continue to use them.”

The partnership requirement has delivered richer, more diverse programs that have connected libraries—and librarians—to their neighborhoods in new ways. Museums and arts councils are often involved in Big Read programs, providing extra hands and unique venues. In Spokane, site of a community-read of Hammett's classic The Maltese Falcon, the Spokane Public Library partnered with Readers Theater of Gonzaga University. Throughout the month-long event, players performed segments in coffee shops, small community libraries, and the local bus terminal.

“We reached a different kind of audience...especially at the bus terminal,” says Susan Creed, assistant director of the library's downtown branch. “I used grant money to buy copies of the book that we could just pass out places.” When Creed and her colleagues gave away free copies at the bus terminal, they were stunned by the overwhelming response, especially from the street toughs who hung out there. “It was a touchpoint with a new group. They loved getting that book, and we talked to them about the library. When you hear things like 'I have some 'C's' in school, you can say, 'Come on by, and we'll see if we can help.' It's led to new things. We now do summer reading sign-ups at the bus terminal.”

At Kansas City Public Library (KCPL), MO, in addition to bringing in museum partners, the library reached out to area businesses to join in the Big Read by sponsoring book groups for their employees. Five major corporations, including Hallmark and the Federal Reserve Bank, took the library up on the offer and found they could open new lines of communication among their staff and management through the common ground of literature. “We had security guards and senior execs talking together about Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms,” says Henry Fortunato, KCPL's director of public affairs. “It was an employee benefit to the corporation and a way to show what an extraordinary resource the library is.”

More to the point, Fortunato says it was a way to show the professionalism of the staff. When corporate partners scheduled a book discussion, the library provided a librarian to lead it. Fortunato credits the experience with dispelling myths of the librarian as shrinking violet. “They got a chance to see firsthand that our librarians are cool, smart, and interesting people,” he says.

While KCPL is planning another Big Read (this time with Tobias Wolff's Old School), Fortunato says he's certain that corporate reading groups could be a sideline for the library, with or without the Big Read. “We have corporations calling up already for the next one. Our goal for 2009 is 20 corporations, and I'm certain we'll hit that,” he says.

David Kipen, program director of the Big Read, also believes in the capacity-building nature of the program. It creates a model and a continuing foundation of support for libraries. “Once libraries do this [the first time], they can do it again on their own,” he says.

The Big Read is about big literature. Old or new, domestic or imported—the featured books are classics. Chute says there's unique power in literary narrative reading. One of the most inspiring moments she's had with the Big Read was listening to Gioia describe the reasoning behind the program's literature-only policy. “He told us that with fiction, we give the author permission to guide our thinking,” she says. “It gives us the ability to empathize with another being...and that's what triggers civic engagement.”

Marie Pyko, public services manager at Topeka & Shawnee County Library, KS, says the power of the Big Read starts in the grant application. “We've done community reading in the past, but we always chose 'safe' titles. The [Big Read] grant application challenges the libraries to do something bigger... not only to get people reading but get them engaged in the community again,” she says. “How do you do that? You build common ground.”

Pyko says her library chose Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God as a way to challenge their community and surface latent, important conversations. The site of Brown v. Board of Education, one of the nation's most famous civil rights cases, Topeka continues as a mostly—though informally—segregated community. “We chose a book most of these people never considered reading. We pulled them out of their comfort zone and asked them to trust us,” she says. “Trust the library. We spoke to them about the importance of reading literature and the danger of not reading. We had more credibility, and they were willing to go along with us because they understood that this was important.”

The Big Read of Their Eyes Were Watching God included events at the Brown v. Board of Education museum—where the Monroe Schoolhouse stood—that attracted hundreds—the most diverse audience the library had ever hosted. The library stretched out to more than 90 community partners, including churches, schools, and informal social centers such as beauty shops, to get free books into readers' hands. To reach nonreaders, they sponsored film screenings and era-appropriate performances. Nearly 300 people crowded into an event with Hurston scholar Lucy Ann Hurston, an archaeologist and grandniece of Zora.

“When we challenged people to think about things that are important, we started connecting to the values in the community,” says Pyko. No small feat, and according to recent research from OCLC, connecting to values is a sure-fire way to reposition the library from purely “informational”—where lots of competition exists—to “transformational” and essential to the area. In fact, Pyko says, citizens didn't define the Big Read as a library program but as a community program.

Pyko says the lasting effect of the Big Read is the hunger to continue the conversations sparked by the program. “[Residents] began to see the library as a place for intellectual conversations,” she says. “They were asking, 'What are we doing next month?' so we started planning right away.”

Kipen says the bold reading choice in Topeka—a 2006 pilot library—set the stage for the evolution of the Big Read as a way to address specific local dilemmas. “We see cities and towns adopting the Big Read as more than a solution to the Bowling Alone conundrum,” he says, referring to Robert Putnam's book about isolation and the drop in civic engagement. He cites the experience Ephrata Public Library, in Pennsylvania's rural Lancaster County, had with Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilyich as a case in point.

The single-building library serves a population of about 30,000, including a mix of Amish and Mennonites. Russian families began to immigrate to the area in the Nineties. They were quiet people who lived an isolated life. Developing their own network of resources, the Russian population grew to nearly ten percent of Ephrata's total, which didn't escape most residents since their Russian neighbors went to their own grocery stores and churches. “The library knew because our passport service and schools knew, but no one was doing anything to integrate [our community],” says Penny Talbert, the library's community relations manager. “I saw Tolstoy, on the Big Read list...as a way to introduce this new population to the old one.”

Schools jumped on board first, with not only reading but a variety of events that allowed Russian students to become guides to their American colleagues. For example, GoogleEarth “fly-overs” of landmarks of their native country were moderated by Russian students, and a Skype conference with kids in Russia was possible because of the wealth of translators in the room. For its part, the library convinced the community newspaper to run the text of the entire book—one chapter a week. The library included a Russian version on its web site. It provided Russian-language classes (71 attendees!) and hosted events featuring Russian food and culture. At one such activity, the library provided a venue for a local Russian couple to sing native folk songs. “A patron asked me, 'Where did you find them?' and I said, 'Two blocks down. They're your neighbors,'” says Talbert.

The result of Ephrata's Big Read? “It's a rebirth of a new kind of community here,” says Talbert. To wit, the Russian Street Fair begun as part of the Big Read is now an annual event. Remarking on the lasting changes driven by the library, Talbert says, “We're a small library, but we're very ambitious.”

The Big Read supports such ambition from the start, with a competitive application process. Grantees are selected based on their ability to develop and implement a reading program that encompasses the community and engages local partners, including public officials and the media. The application encourages fresh thinking about the types of issues that can be addressed through shared reading—real issues such as capturing new and diverse audiences, healing old wounds, uniting a fragmented population.

A challenging grant application to be sure, but the Big Read winners get a big return on their investment: grant dollars, publicity materials including posters, banners, and bookmarks, plus an online organizer's guide for running a successful program. The Big Read also provides plenty of inspiration through networking. Grantees are gathered for an orientation that includes discussions and sessions devoted to literature and reading. Back in the municipalities, launch events often feature the Big Read's team members, including literary heavyweights such as Kipen, a former book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and the Today Show (see sidebar for his perspective). In short, the Big Read includes a big safety net to ensure grantees succeed.

Among the most impressive features of the Big Read's aid is a library of resources—including those for readers and teachers and audio guides—for each novel. The audio guides' commentary is provided by renowned artists, educators, and public figures, with production values strong enough to be used as radio programming. Packaging of the print vehicles is engaging. “The teachers took one look at the curriculum guides and got on board...every one of them,” says Ephrata's Talbert. The county's schools were so enamored of the Big Read's teacher and student resources that they rewrote curricula, weaving the book throughout. Talbert says it started a chain reaction of interest throughout the area. “When kids are talking about Tolstoy on the bus, it gets their parents' attention. Then, the parents are engaged,” she says.

“Packaging is a key driver of interest. This cuts through the clutter,” says KCPL's Fortunato. “High-quality packaging promises a high-quality experience.”

IMLS was so smitten with the materials that it distributed them to nearly 15,000 public libraries nationwide—libraries that didn't get grants but could use them as kits for reading groups. “The materials are inspirations for reading and writing, and they speak across generations,” says Chute. “Good quality stuff like this doesn't just sit.”

Indeed, “stuff like this” sparks big efforts. With assistance and resources that rarely appear as a library line item, the Big Read provides libraries with an effective tool for uniting a community on common ground. Perhaps the most important element of the program is that it requires no bending or twisting of the library brand—no convincing local officials or partners that the library should be involved (please, we're here!). The role of the library in a local reading program is obvious and pure. Combined with passion and a genuine understanding of area issues, the Big Read can be a way to help residents realize on their own that the library is not just about books, it's a place of transformation.