Village Reading Rooms: Book Outreach in Botswana

Village reading rooms (VRRs) are an extension of Botswana's Public Library Service into rural areas. At its beginning in 1986, the VRR project was closely linked to the adult literacy programme of the Department of Non-Formal Education. The VRRs were intended primarily to serve adult literacy learners and newly literate adults. However, because the VRRs had to be housed at first in existing school buildings, schoolchildren have become the most active and most numerous users. The villages have claimed the VRRs as an important part of community life. Introduction The Village Reading Rooms project in Botswana serves as an outreach service for communities far away from the major centres where public libraries are located. Other Botswana National Library Service outreach programmes include the Mobile Libraries and the Book Box Service. There are 24 public libraries, and most of them support one or two one of the Reading Rooms. The exception is the Mochudi branch library, which is in the Kgatleng District where the project was piloted. There 20 Village Reading Rooms were first piloted in 1986. The Village Reading Rooms (VRRs) are a rural library network originally aimed at providing basic reading material to neoliterates who have gone through the Department of Non-Formal Education's Literacy Programme. The service is similar to that of the public library, but on a very small scale. Each VRR starts with a base stock of 600 titles. There is a reference section, a periodicals section that may only be used on the premises, and the normal circulation service. Users may borrow two books at a time for a period of two weeks. The VRRs are also social centres. In most villages, the VRR is the only building with electricity, so many cultural and social activities take place there. The Architects of the VRR The idea of Village Reading Rooms was first mooted at the Botswana Library Association's (BLA) Libraries and Literacy Conference held in Kanye, a southern rural village in Botswana, in 1985. The idea was born out of a perceived need to take library services to the grassroots. The BLA Kanye Conference brought together librarians and literacy personnel to develop a common strategy that could offer the illiterate population the means to become functionally literate. It also was a move to promote maximum use of the Public Library Service. It was fueled by the vision behind the work of the Department of Non-Formal Education (DNFE). The DNFE is the department in the Ministry of Education with responsibility for adult literacy. The DNFE had realized that although it could provide literacy skills to its adult literacy pupils, there would have to be a grassroots library service to sustain these basic literacy skills. In the development of the VRR project, the DNFE worked hand-in-hand with the Department of National Library Service. Literacy Work in Botswana Literacy work in Botswana was started by the Department of Community Development under the direction of the Welfare Office in the Department of Education. Unfortunately, most of the initial efforts were nongovernmental, from organizations such as the Botswana Council of Women, the Young Christian Association, and the Lutheran Church of Botswana. In 1977, the National Commission on Education recommended making literacy education an integral part of the education system. Pilot projects in 1977 and 1978 led to the Literacy Programme being set up in 1980. The pilot projects were evaluated, and the results demonstrated that there was popular demand for their continuation. The Literacy Programme was formally launched in 1981 with the following objectives: * To eradicate illiteracy and enable an estimated 250,000 illiterate adults and youth (40% of the population between 15 and 45 years of age) to become literate in Setswana and numerics within a period of six years, that is, 1980-1985. (In this group should be included those who had dropped out before completing five years of schooling. …

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