In early March, the Mumford Room in the Library of Congress's James Madison Building became a combination exhibition hall and conference center as organizational representatives from more than 40 of the Center for the Book's reading promotion partners gathered to display their materials, share resources, exchange ideas and report on their programs to promote reading and literacy. Established in 1987, the partnership program's mission is to share information and join forces in promoting books, literacy, reading and libraries.
"This was the 20th such annual gathering that we've hosted," said Center for the Book Director John Y. Cole, who served as moderator of the day's discussions. "The character of the meeting changes each year as we add new partners, but every session has been upbeat, informative and useful in its own way for both the participating partners and for the Center for the Book. It was a wonderful occasion that combined showing off new projects, recruiting new project partners and cultivating enthusiastic new—and young—representatives from many of our partner organizations."
New organizational partners who participated in the meeting were Jumpstart, the Junior League of Washington, the National Humanities Alliance, the Reading Connection and the Washington State Library. The Smithsonian Latino Center, a special guest at the meeting, subsequently joined the partnership—which now totals more than 80 nonprofit and governmental organizations.
New partners that were unable to attend the meeting included the International Children's Digital Library, the Wish You Well Foundation and the National Literary Society for the Deaf (NLSD).
The NLSD, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in February 2007, marked the new partnership with a public event held at the Library on March 13. The event featured lectures, a display of new resource directories for the deaf and excerpts from a new PBS film documentary titled "Through Deaf Eyes," which made its broadcast debut on March 21.
A highlight of the reading promotion partners' meeting was a discussion by Robin Adelson, executive director of the Children's Book Council, of a new cooperative initiative with the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress: the creation of a position titled National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. Appointed by the Librarian of Congress and supported by private funds, the National Ambassador will speak at reading promotion events throughout the country to discuss topics such as the value of reading aloud to young people and lifelong literacy. The new position will be formally announced in June and an appointment will be made in January 2008.