The Digital Skills Sharing Programme, led by the Publishers Association and The Reading Agency and funded by Arts Council England’s Libraries Development Initiatives, set out to explore how libraries might extend their vital reader development work online. It brought together six mixed teams of publishers and librarians to devise and deliver a project over a 9 month period, offering them a shared learning opportunity through the exchange of ideas and expertise. The project won an Edge 2013 Virtual/ Digital award which rewards good practice in innovative library and information projects
Joanna Ellis, Associate Director of the Literary Platform, worked as project manager on the programme. Her work included: co-ordinating and providing support to the six project teams, benchmarking and evaluating the team projects at various stages, providing interim reports to the steering committee and funders, and producing three events for which she programmed speakers from various library authorities and publishing houses as well as other organisations such as Google, the Guardian, the BBC, Made by Many and Storythings.
She also developed a learning and resources programme designed to support the six project teams whilst also extending the benefits of the programme to a wider community of librarians and publishers. Resources included a series of specially commissioned ‘how tos’ and best practice case studies of digital engagement and communications work. These, along with films of the live events, were posted on a dedicated area of The Reading Agency website.
As a result of our work on the Digital Skills Sharing project The Literary Platform was invited to participate in Arts Council England’s round table discussion on the digital section of their Envisioning the Library of the Future report. We are also working with The Reading Agency on two more projects. You can read about the work we are doing with them on the Independent Foreign Fiction Price here.