Mohsen Haji Zeinolabedini Faculty member of LIS, Shahid Beheshti University|
To achieve scientific, cultural, and economic growth and prosperity, there is no way except to promote a reading culture and create a continuous and purposeful public habit. Therefore, promoting a reading culture can be considered as a fundamental step in human development and the development of countries. It is sensible that in order to achieve this purpose, establishing the habit of reading among the general public must be considered.
Because promoting reading has focused its work on integrating its services with people’s daily lives, helping them solve their problems, nurturing their talents and deterring them from inappropriate tendencies to unhealthy entertainment and unfavorable desires due to its high moral and ethical objectives. Such activities importantly are supposed to provide suitable opportunities in order to gather different groups of people to benefit from reading and efficiently spending their leisure time and in addition, guide them in developing human relationships and share their emotions. In such activities, there are often no differences among people in terms of their age, knowledge, and health and everyone, regardless of their race, nationality, religion, or ethnicity, is encouraged to read and such cultural gatherings can provide them with the opportunity to read a variety of information sources in order to preserve and transmit knowledge to enhance their intellectual capacity and their knowledge. According to the latest guidelines by the International Federation of Librarian Associations and Institutions (IFLAs) for public libraries, NGOs play
An important role in shifting the focus onto the cultural and artistic development and promoting reading books inside a society. Extensive and healthy reading programs can effectively help develop the moral values and mental health of the community and attract more people to read books, prevent the disadvantaged groups from committing delinquency and criminality, and compensate for the deficiencies and moral failures such as shyness, jealousy, stinginess, and extreme competition. In this regard, not only should the organizations and institutions related to books and reading strive to provide services to ordinary people and to the ones who receive their services, but also to the specific groups of society such as ethnic, religious, and racial minorities, the disabled, patients , prisoners, workers, housewives, employees, children, and villagers by providing physical conditions and appropriate facilities in order to promote reading and in addition, they should extend such services to remote and under-populated areas through book promotion groups, mobile libraries, and other facilities. It should not be.
Overlooked that these activities will be effective if they go beyond the bureaucracy and come out inside a society, and people will be intrinsically motivated to encourage each other to read books. Thus, in addition to sharing experiences, feelings, and interests, reading will grow its root among the people and it is, of course, more desirable that the reading promotion is gained and offered by themselves. In Iran, promoting book-reading culture has been systematically structured for several years. Therefore, it is appropriate to review the activities carried out in this regard, to introduce a number of successful projects in Iran, in order to compare the local plans, evaluate the national ones, and identify the potential strengths and weaknesses. These programs have special privileges that distinguish it from other regular activities. The followings are the most important Ones.
Non-Governmental Plans: This plan is a voluntary one organized by the public and non-governmental organizations. The idea of encouraging book-promotion groups rose among the groups themselves and book fans and then followed by the colleagues and activists. Initially, more than 90 active plans were received by the festival secretariat, which was several times more than what had been expected.
-Matching to Local and Regional Needs: All the plans and activities are “native”. None of the plans have been copied from the western models or ideas implemented in the capital. Each group has established and implemented creative and innovative activities based on their needs, backgrounds and experiences.
-Low-cost and Economically Healthy: All plans are economically “healthy and well-built”; either those which are charity-driven or those have been strengthen with small cultural-economic activities, they have consciously and controllably eliminated the possibility of any kind of corruption in their group.
-Volunteerism: None of these groups have been given a mission from either government or private sector (such as publishing industries, semi-governmental organizations, etc.), and all have worked solely to promote book-reading due to their personal concern.
– Extensive use of virtual social networks: Utilizing the capabilities and features of “virtual space” are of other features of these plans. Accordingly, using the site, blog, email, and even virtual networks (such as Facebook) and mobile-based virtual networks (such as Viber and Telegram) has been noticed in most of the plans received. This feature becomes even more important when many of them have been implemented in remote cities and even villages, reflecting the expansion of these capabilities and the breadth of IT-based activities.
-Group-work: While many people (and even experts) in the society claim that the culture of teamwork has been diminished among the people, but the plans sent for the festival showed that more than eighty percent of them are run as a group and by popular support. This is an important point that is expected to be addressed in public and private sector planning.
-Focus on Women and Children: According to education experts, the most focus should be on this age range and this is also a fundamental feature in the international plans and fortunately it is clearly reflected in the plans reached at the festival. Another highlight is the “strong presence of women and girls”. These groups have practically proved this claim that women outnumber men in voluntary engagement and activities.
