Conspiring in favor of reading : book clubs and literary trails

This article describes two of the sessions organised in the first edition of the Universitat de Barcelona’s Postgraduate Degree in Reading Promotion, which was taught at the Faculty of Library and Information Science during the academic year 2017-2018.

The two sessions were part of a module on the subject of reading promotion activities and strategies. The first, which took the form of a lecture, focused on reading promotion theory, the principles underlying book clubs and the most typical features of such clubs. It also provided an introduction to other reading-related activities, such as literary trails.

The second session gave participants a practical opportunity to design a book club session and go on a literary trail which culminated in a guided visit of an art exhibition. In this way, as well as showing how useful book clubs and literary trails can be for encouraging people to read, the two sessions also demonstrated the interdisciplinary nature of different reading promotion activities.