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I am responsible for developing and monitoring reading groups within Greenwich Libraries.  We have 10 groups, 5 general reading groups; 1 Romance and sagas; 1 African Caribbean literature; Chinese language group; 1 Council staff group and 1 Get into reading group.  Groups vary between 6 to 12+, though not everyone comes  to every meeting.  We also support a refugees reading group run by the local college and another college run group who actually read aloud in the group meeting. I would be interested in inter authority borrowing but we haven't worked out the permutations of how to do it yet.

Stock is suggested by the group members and sometimes by the fact that we have best sellers that we think would be interesting reads for the groups.  Each group can suggest 5 titles and I buy 12 copies of each title. Not every group wants to suggest titles and are happy to read the titles given.  This leaves the other groups with more scope for suggesting more than their allowance.  The books go the rounds of the groups then are reallocated to libraries round the borough.  If the groups request bestsellers we put in a bid to the libraries doing bestsellers for 12 copies when they come off the list.  We don't tend to buy hard backs for obvious reasons.  We do not allow requests to be put on reading group stock while the books are still wanted by groups.

The Chinese language group is obviously the most expensive as their stock is pricey and can only move into the borough libraries.  The stock for the African Caribbean Literature group and the romance and sagas is often read by the general reading groups except for some of the more esoteric titles that go straight into libraries.

I maintain a list of books sent out to groups each month.  I have a reading group stock list that identifies which groups have borrowed. Sometimes, with the two groups run by friends of the library, I decide which book to send, but this is from their suggestion list.  If we have too many books that we think won't be wanted by more than one group, I think very hard before I buy it.  We have two groups that often request old out of date titles that we either do not have copies of in the system or not enough for a group to read.