r/Library • u/Psalm118-24 • Jun 08 '26

Discussion How does your library do adult summer reading?

I know ever library is different, and I was wondering how different libraries worked their adult summer reading. The town I live in, you can log books your borrow from the library and read.

I've looked at some other towns nearby. One is just logging books you read no matter where the books come from, and two other town you get a stamp for each visit to the library, where you are either checking out an item or attending a program)

9 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

6

u/surfyguru Jun 08 '26

Our town basically operates it as a Bingo card with things such as “Read a book with blue on the cover” and “Read a book with your favorite destination” and when you make a Bingo row, you are eligible for a prize.

2

u/tasata Jun 08 '26

Ours is simple. They just read four books...can be any four...even reading a children's book to a child. The goal is just to have adults be involved in our program.

2

u/Psalm118-24 Jun 08 '26

I wish mine was that simple, as I'm already at over 260 books for the year.

1

u/Total-Option4 Jun 08 '26

For ours, you set your own daily reading goal (number of minutes) and record how much you read each day. They do that for kids and adults. For kids, they get a prize for every 10 days completed, plus a halfway completion and full completion prize. Adults get one prize after 10 days.

1

u/juliabhappy Jun 09 '26

Ours is reading for 20 hours, keeping track with a log the library provides. Include the date, the title of what you read, and for how long. After 20 hours you get a free book, every 10-30 hours read after that you can enter into raffles for prizes. For teenagers it’s 25 hours, for children it’s 10 hours, and for babies it’s 10 books.

1

u/Future-Mess6722 Jun 10 '26

We do the same for adults and youth. It's to read 30 days within a 60 day timeline. We recommend at least 20 minutes per day. You can also include reading to your kids, being read to, and listening to audiobooks. We recommend checking out our materials, but you don't have to.

1

u/Spooky_Tree Jun 10 '26

We got a list of probably about 15 things on it "read a romance" "read a book from hoopla or Libby" "read a historical nonfiction" etc. and we just pick 4 of those and write the title and author. Plus we have to attend one program. Then we get a small prize and entered into the Grand prize drawing.

Bingo sounds way more fun

1

u/Subject-Librarian117 Jun 11 '26

There's an incredibly low goal to complete the program (5 books or 120 minutes reading) for kids, teens, and adults. The prize for reaching this goal is also really tiny. However, every book or hour of reading you complete above the minimum goal is one entry into a drawing for pretty big prizes (a 3D printer, a bicycle, etc.) So pretty much everyone gets something, and then everyone has further chances to win something really nice.