Miranda McKearney: The power of reading together

From a speech given by the chief executive of the Reading Agency at the British Library, London

The Reading Agency believes that readers, libraries' core business, should be at the centre of service, resource and partnership development. This is firm ground on which to build a 21st-century vision and funding for the service. What libraries do with readers is unique and therefore a necessary ingredient of lots of other policy and partnership agendas. This ought to be the basis for unlocking major government investment. No other agency works with readers with the same mixture of access and inspiration and an ethos that emphasises community trust.

It's not just our educational dreams that can be realised by harnessing the power of libraries' work with readers. Evidence is emerging that it can help to build more cohesive, healthier communities, more creative workplaces and massively enhance people's quality of life and wellbeing.

Policy-makers in the area of neighbourhood renewal and community cohesion would do well to make greater use of the potential of libraries' work with readers. Take one small area of the work – readers' groups. We've just done some research which shows how belonging to a library-based readers' group gives people who might otherwise feel on the margins a sense of belonging to a diverse community.

Joshua, a member of a Cambridgeshire Chatterbooks reading group, was quiet and shy to begin with but later revealed that he has an interest in scary and funny stories. The librarian leading the group recalls: "At the fourth meeting of the group he really opened up and read out 'Are you pink and green?' from Michael Rosen's Book of Silly Poems. Among a lot of giggling he got to the end of the poem to be met with a round of applause. It was a wonderful moment."