Branje je žur, reading is cool is a British Council project linking public libraries and schools in Slovenia to inspire young people to read. It is based on the Reading for Change report findings on 15-year-olds.

The purpose of this project is to present reading as an enjoyable activity in an informal setting which is not reminiscent of school, is reader-centred and focuses on what is important and interesting to secondary school students. Key players in this concept are the group facilitators, who are young enthusiastic readers themselves.

Each partner library works on 6 titles that are in most cases also available in their Slovene translations, so weaker students of English could join in. The choice of books is left to the young facilitators who, together with the librarian develop a programme of reading group meetings for the school year.

British Council provides the expertise, the books and the training, while the libraries engage their local secondary schools and organise reading groups to which secondary school students actually turn up.

The project is now in the second year of running and we can now safely say that a key factor in the model that works for Slovenia is getting schools to support this type of informal reading by recognising it in their curriculum as optional compulsory activities (obvezne izbirne vsebine).

Take a look at the current list of libraries involved in the project with the list of books for reading groups. There is no reason why more libraries and schools should not join this scheme, since books may be borrowed via COBISS.SI.

Each partner library also received a collection of books selected by the British Council UK fiction for teenage readers to encourage young people to read further outside the reading group.

Since all British Council projects have to come to an end, we would hope that this model will be taken up by the network of public libraries with funding secured from the Ministry of Culture or other sources for 2008/09 and beyond.

Please contact Danila Beloglavec for further information.