Denver Public Library’s strategic plan includes an initiative to create opportunities for staff to learn, discover, explore, create and innovate. The Advisory Services group is leading the charge with the GenreLand Reading Challenge, a game designed to get staff reading outside their comfort zones, talking with each other about what they’re reading and posting reviews to DPL’s public website for items that fall outside their normal reading habits. Our goal is to empower employees in all work units and job titles to talk with our customers about books and reading. We seek to reinforce a culture of reading and sharing among staff members that will ultimately improve our readers’ advisory services and the overall customer experience, both in person and online.

The rules of the game were simple but challenging: over the course of six months, participants were required to read 16 books in different genres, from biographies to westerns (including at least one audiobook and one eBook), then post a Staff Review to DPL’s public website for each book. All staff members were encouraged to participate, regardless of work unit or job title. Participants used a gameboard loosely based on the children’s board game “Candy Land” to track their progress. Staff were encouraged to share reading recommendations with each other by blogging about their favorite genres on DPL’s internal StaffWeb and chatting about their reading choices, in person and in our internal discussion forum. There were some great incentives for finishing, including training credits, a nifty badge, and of course, bragging rights.

Almost 100 staff members attempted the challenge and 48 brave souls completed their attempt. 93% of participants who responded to our feedback survey said they read something they wouldn’t normally have read as a result of this challenge, so we were definitely reading outside our comfort zones. The Reading Challenge also got us talking about all the different kinds of books we were reading. Several people wrote blogs about their favorite genres with reading suggestions to help out fellow participants who were just starting out in those genres. There were also some great discussions in the Reading Challenge forum about what to read next. 62% of participants who responded to our survey stated they talked about what they were reading with friends and colleagues more than usual as a result of the challenge. The challenge had a phenomenal impact on our online reviews--not only by increasing the number of reviews, but also by adding more voices and a greater diversity of opinions. During the six-month period between September 2013 and February 2014, the total number of reviews increased from 205 posted last year to 1161 this year as a result of the Reading Challenge. Our average number of staff reviewers increased from 12 per month to 44 per month during the challenge. Of the staff members who participated, 58% had never submitted reviews before. Even better, 94% of participants who answered our survey stated they will continue to post reviews now that the challenge has ended.