Miranda McKearney

Biography: MIRANDA MCKEARNEY OBE is Director of The Reading Agency, an independent charity with a mission to get more reading to more people. The agency's work includes policy, research, advocacy and national programmes (with an emphasis on innovation). Since The Reading Agency came into being in 2002 it has led some powerful national library initiatives, including the summer reading challenge, the nation's biggest annual promotion of children's reading.

The Reading Agency will be leading the library engagement programme for the 2008 National Year of Reading, working with the National Literacy Trust, and on behalf of the Department for Children, Schools and Families.

Miranda is passionate about reading. She has worked as an activist in the field for 20 years, and helped found the three smaller development agencies which were merged to form TRA. She has a background in marketing, the arts and literature. She's married to a teacher, has two teenage children and spends any spare weekends walking in Dorset, on Hardy's Eggardon Hill. Current reading favourites: Pepys' Diary, Charles Handy's The New Alchemists and Eric Von Hippel's Democratising Innovation.

Miranda is a member of the Advisory Council for Libraries, a board member of MLA South East and an Honorary Member of the Youth Libraries Group.

Abstract: Back on Track? libraries and reading

Miranda McKearney , Director of The Reading Agency updates the conference on the Year of Reading and the opportunities it offers libraries. She looks at recent trends, and an exciting emerging vision of a modern public library service. She argues that there is potential for libraries to position themselves as the community destination for reading, and to refocus on their core reading business with an emphasis on community engagement and outcomes.