A Human Library is a way for people to reach out and connect with individuals in their community that they might not normally engage with. Visitors to a library have an opportunity during a planned event to borrow Human Books and to engage in conversation with the books. Human Libraries promote tolerance, celebrate differences and encourage understanding of people who come from varied cultural or lifestyle backgrounds.

For more information visit the OCULA’s Human Library Committee Page. 

In 2008 a group of volunteers — readers, writers, educators , librarians, parents, young people, and book and magazine publishers — got together to talk about a nationwide way to make Canada a country of readers.

Over the course of four years this group grew and organized three national summits, held in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. The summits provided the opportunity to learn about national reading plans around the world, from Brazil to the Netherlands, and to discover the best of the many innovative programs already in place in Canada. Since then, word spread and more volunteers came together in working groups of more than a hundred participants to develop uniquely Canadian strategies around reading. The National Reading Campaign incorporated as a not-for-profit organization in 2012. The National Reading Plan is the fruit of all this work.

The National Reading Campaign’s mission? To make reading a national priority.

The National Reading Campaign’s vision? To create, sustain and grow a society in which everyone has an equal opportunity to become and remain a lifelong reader.