Promoción de la lectura en zonas urbanas de Lima: El caso del servicio Casero del Libro de la Biblioteca Municipal de Miraflores

This research aims to provide certain lines of work for reading promotion in public libraries. It seeks to document and analyze a successful experience of reading promotion in order to identify best practices that can be replicated in other contexts. This study case focuses on the reading promotion service called "Casero del Libro" (market seller of books), driven by the Municipal Library of Miraflores in Lima. Variables related to reading practices and the service provided and their impact on the target audience, market sellers, are analyzed. It seeks to distinguish the characteristics of a reading promotion service of a public library so that it is more accessible to its public; it seeks to synthesize the best practices of this particular service. The overall objective of the research is to understand the main characteristics of a successful experience of reading promotion developed in a public library in Lima; while specific objectives are to identify the most relevant strategies of reading promotion employed in this experience and to identify the changes in reading habits of the users of this service. The research begins with the following research questions: What are the objectives of a reading promotion service in non-traditional places offered by a public library? What are the main features that should have a reading promotion service to be successful in Lima, Peru? What strategies were used in the creation of the reading promotion service? What strategies could be replicated to promote reading? Why users participate in the service? What do users think about the reading promotion service? Have they changed their reading habits during the years of service? What do users think about books and reading? We worked with the following assumptions: • The public library approaches its potential users through reading promotion services in non-traditional places, while doing so it accomplishes two goals: to instill reading habits in adults and to attract adults and their families to the library. • The most important strategies to promote reading in adults are focused on a personalized service and the use of oral language as motivators for reading. • Users participate in this service because reading is useful for them, on a personal and family level, as in the workplace. In summary, all proposed hypotheses are true, except that in this study case, the library fails to attract new users for its institution, meaning the users of the service "Casero del Libro" only use the service, but do not go to the library after that. The research is qualitative; interviews with users and librarians (managers and service librarians) were performed. Qualitative methodology was chosen because with this work seeks to understand the perceptions of the different actors of the service and this methodology allows to collect the wealth of imagination, opinions and points of view of people. Interviews were conducted with 19 market sellers and 5 librarians during 2008 and 2013 in Lima. The main limitation of this study is that since a qualitative methodology was used, this case study includes only the experience among actors of this service