Contact: [email protected]

At the beginning of supporting Reading Groups ( about 5 yrs ago) Cambridgeshire decided not to create a separate stock of books and admin. We wanted it to be seamless. Currently we are serving 120 active Adult groups and about 12 children's and several teenage groups. As coordinator I keep an eye on the demand for particular titles and alert the stock team when more are required above and beyond the normal buying pattern. Often Reading groups seem to generate a general interest in a title and it takes off big time with individual readers as well as the groups. Most recently this happened with The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and The Short History of Tractors in Ukranian.

Our system does keep a lot of titles in circulation for much longer and shelf sitters are no longer a problem. We try to avoid buying large quantities of any title in hardback and top up popular demand with paperbacks. So far we have not experienced over stocking any particular title and the Reading Groups enjoy a very wide range of books. They are sometimes disappointed when we can't deliver multiple copies of a classic which has fallen out of demand eg. Old Goriot by Balzac

My main problem is Reading Groups constant demand for suggestions of what to read next. In September I will be launching a books page on Cambridgeshire Library Service Web-pages to cater for local interests and demand with direct links to our catalogue. This ties in neatly with our change over to Unicorn and I-Bistro from our old Cambook system.

Click here to view  Reading Group's leaflet used by Cambridgeshire.