In contrast with what has been happening elsewhere, with book loans falling by nearly a fifth last year, the Pembroke Public Library seems to be attracting more readers. Sarah Carabott asks Lara Calleja, who manages the small library, about her secret.
Swapping stale books with those more popular among readers and keeping the shelves “dynamic” resulted in the number of loans at the Pembroke Public Library increasing more than twofold.
The first thing to welcome you at the door is a table of books the library has just acquired, from a gluten-free recipe book to one by Yoko Ono, the Japanese multi-media artist and John Lennon’s widow. There is also Edward de Bono’s creativity textbook Lateral Thinking and Alex Vella Gera’s Is-Sriep reġgħu saru velenużi.
To the right is a notebook on a shelf where library users scribble down new titles they would like to read. The set-up suggests that Lara Calleja, who took the library under her wing five years ago, is applying her basic marketing skills to lure more readers.
The number of loans has in fact increased – from 2,500 in her second year at the library to a record of 5,200 in the first 10 monthsof this year.
The 27-year-old said the formula of her success contained several ingredients, including building a relationship with the users, keeping in touch with readers through social media and introducing fresh material, even if it was just a reprint of a classic.
“It’s a case of keeping the shelves dynamic, with as much varied material as it can possibly contain. I do consider as crucial the element of change and reshuffling. A library is there for the primary purpose of educating and motivating and that is fulfilled by constantly supplying a variety of material,” she noted when asked about how she decides what stays and what goes.
When she first began her job at the library – which opens three times weekly – the shelves even hosted books published back in the 1960s, which “were not appealing at all”.
Ms Calleja did not replace such classics with contemporary works but swapped them with more recent and updated reprints that made these familiar reads more attractive, especially since the language has developed since.
She uses the yearly budget allocated to her to introduce authors from across the globe, such as Chilean-American writer Isabel Allende, Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez and contemporary Japanese author Haruki Murakami.
She also follows reviews, such as those on Goodreads – an online international network of readers – and tries to read the books herself as soon as they are placed on the shelves in a bid to be better able to guide the library’s patrons.
She never runs out of ideas, primarily because her notebook for fresh suggestions from users is continuously updated.
Ms Calleja, who is writing her own book, believes that one of her achievements was convincing two avid readers of Danielle Steel to diversify their tastes and try out Paulo Coelho and Mr Vella Gera.
She believes that reading different authors is like meeting new people and it is just a matter of keeping an open mind. Apart from introducing readers to authors through their work, Ms Calleja, whose main job is doing sales analysis for a travel company, also organises a yearly event during which one can meet the writers in person.
She has already invited local authors – including Claire Azzopardi, Adrian Grima, Trevor Zahra and Immanuel Mifsud – to read out their work at the library.
Look up the page Pembroke Public Library – Malta on Facebook to keep up with Ms Calleja’s suggestions for compelling new reading material.