Art & Culture Live!: Community Collaborations - Winona Reads!
Winona Reads! was a program designed to promote reading and literature through the experience of the community reading and discussing the same book at the same time and organized by the Winona Public Library (Winona, MN). The community read The Turtle Catcher by Minnesota author Nicol Helget and had three public discussions. The project concluded with a visit from the author.
Event Dates and Locations:
May 19, 2010 – Public discussion group at the Winona Senior Friendship Center (Winona, MN)
May 26, 2010 – Public discussion group at the Winona County History Center (Winona, MN)
June 2, 2010 – Public discussion group at the Winona Public Library (Winona, MN)
June 7, 2010 – Meet the Author at the Masonic Temple (Winona, MN)
Partner Organization(s): Winona Reads! Committee
Partner Organization(s) Contribution/Role in the Program: The Committee developed the program and provided publicity for the events.
Program Outputs: Outputs are things you can count such as attendance, number of new participants, and the number of attendees who had never been at a similar event, and so on.
The three discussions had a total of 47 people attend.
The “Meet the Author” event had 50 attendees.
30 copies of the book held at the Library had a total circulation count of 152 during the span of the program.
Local bookstores sold 65 copies of the book.
Measurable Outcomes may be collected by survey, anecdotal responses, post-test; End user change in Behavior, Attitude, Skills, Knowledge, Condition and/or Status
In response to the program, seven private book clubs chose to discuss the book as well, furthering the community connection. The program educated the Library in publicity to the community as they were able to measure how people found out about the programs. The author talk had a profound impact on the rest of the program and people commented that her talk changed their experience with the book. On the associated survey, 24 of 56 people rated the program 5 out of 5, while another 22 rated it a 4. The program successfully got 42 of those people to read something they never would have before.