Introduction and background

Finland tops the World's Most Literate Nations (www.ccsu.edu/wmln) rankings, which judge not their populace's ability to read but, rather, literate behaviours and their supporting resources. Even so, we feel that there is still more that we can do for those children who have negative views of reading or who are struggling with their reading skills, and we believe that the lessons we have learnt about how to engage the most reluctant readers with stories will be universally applicable.

In Finland, all libraries are free and open to everybody and we have a cultural history of library use. Up to 80% of the population uses the libraries and the total annual lending in 2015 was 16.4 items per citizen. Seinäjoki public library is the provincial library for the region of South Ostrobothnia. The region is about 13,999 square kilometres in area and has fewer than 200,000 inhabitants, of whom around 60,000 live in the city of Seinäjoki itself. The public library comprises a main central library, three branch libraries and two mobile libraries and has a staff of 55. The total annual lending in Seinäjoki library is comparatively high: 20.9 items per citizen in 2015. Of the total items lent, 78.7% were books, most being physical books, as the e-book collections are still very small.

Seinäjoki schools do not have large school libraries and there is a culture of Seinäjoki public library support for schools. The library has a contract with schools for co-operation and regular meetings with teachers. For example, library staff will give book talks, arrange author visits to schools, teach information retrieval skills and attend parents’ meetings to talk about reading, media skills and libraries.

Mervi says: