November/December 2002 Vol. 34, no. 6

Time for Action

Céline Gendron, Research and Information Services

The conference "La médiation de la lecture auprès des jeunes: le temps d’agir" was held October 24-26, 2002, at Château Mont Sainte-Anne, near Québec. At the conference, more than 200 people had the opportunity to discuss the implementation of new collective strategies to promote reading and the transmission of knowledge to children and their families. Participants included representatives from school boards and both public and school libraries, cultural policy leaders at various levels of government, and those with teaching, literacy and non-traditional teaching backgrounds.

The meeting was the result of collaboration between many organizations devoted to the promotion of reading: the Association du personnel des services documentaires scolaires (APSDS), the Association des bibliothèques publiques du Québec, the Société pour la promotion de la science et de la technologie (SPST), the Bibliothèque nationale du Québec (BNQ), the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres (ANEL) and Communication-Jeunesse.

The Library and Archives of Canada, who was invited to participate in the Salon de l’innovation en lecture, welcomed the opportunity to promote its services and products. Emphasis was placed on the most recent issue of Read Up On It, The Magic of Books, and the International Forum on Canadian Children's Literature, which is organizing a major conference in Ottawa, from June 26 to 29, 2003, as part of the National Library of Canada's 50th anniversary.