Page 174 - AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report

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as a point of reference for learning about quality applications geared to children and teenagers by helping users and mediators choose those that are best suited to their needs and interests.
It is targeted at teachers of various levels, librarians specialising in children’s and teenagers’ libraries, mothers and fathers, developers of applications, publishers and other sector agents. The database of selected apps for child and teen readers is freely available online and users can consult entries for nearly 300 apps. The platform also allows users to download infographics and submit queries and offers various educational activities.
This effort to increase the places where reading is recommended has taken to the streets – in particular, means of transport, where people are being encouraged to read and can download works at a click or using a simple QR code. Reading is getting wheels and even wings.
Promoting digital reading on underground transport in major cities
Experiences that involve bringing reading to underground transport range from the possibility of borrowing print books from the lending libraries – bibliometros – of Santago de Chile
and Madrid to Moscow Metro’s initiative of encouraging travellers to read classic authors. In the case of Moscow, readers can access classic literary works through 150 posters with QR codes distributed throughout the city’s under- ground train network. These virtual bookshelves displaying the books’ spines invite users to use their smartphones or tablets to download the eBooks of their choice.
The Chinese capital has also joined in the endeavour to make digital reading available in underground networks. As in Moscow, travellers on the Beijing Subway can enjoy free access to some 70,000 eBooks, which they can download onto their mobile devices using QR codes inside
the carriages. The initiative is run by China’s national library and seeks to boost reading by helping readers take advantage of technological developments and by harnessing the interest Chinese people have shown in digital reading on their mobiles.
The Beijing Subway also provides access to digital audiobooks through the initiative of the audiobook platform igetget in an ambitious cam- paign to encourage this type of reading based on sound recordings. Travellers are surprised to find certain carriages plastered with images of book spines. This panels allow them to download the audio material by scanning the QR codes they contain.
Similar experiments have been conducted in a different part of the world. The Metro Reads programme was started up in New York and allowed travellers to fully or partially access eBooks to make their journey more pleasurable. The works listed in the Metro Reads catalogue were available from a website designed to
be consulted and read on mobile devices, telephones and tablets, to which the reading was adapted. The initiative was temporary but deserves to be a long-distance journey with no final destination.
Experiences for bringing digital reading to travellers are not limited to collective transport; it is also possible to read both on paper and on screens in taxis. This experience was introduced in Colombia through the Easy Taxi application and has been adopted in other countries. It is based on the initial taxi library – bibliotaxis – service, which had been providing paper books to users of this taxi network and decided to broaden its offering to digital books.
The communication multinational has thus turned Bogota’s taxis into virtual mobile libraries. The experience was launched with the circu- lation of more than 3,500 printed books and 100,000 digital works. Passengers can download the digital books onto their mobile devices using
PLACES AND GOOD PRACTICE
Readers in the digital age