for the annual Idea Exchange of State Centers for the Book at the Library of Congress

1. Report from the Field
Lisa Comstock (CT)
Kate Lentz (RI)
Curtis Rogers (SC)

2. Introduction
• Like many great ideas,
Route 1 Reads was
concocted over lunch and
committed to over
margaritas!
• Goal - to promote East
Coast Centers for the Book
• Start as a demonstration
project and then try to
pitch it to a likely
collaborator (e.g., AAA) for
development into an
annual outreach project.

3. Process
• Mary (NH) and Sharon (MA) organized us and
sent out a survey:
– Did the books we chose need to reference a
geographic area where Rt 1 goes through the state?
– Did they have to be well known?
– Contemporary?
– Fiction?
• We voted to keep it vague. Route 1 would be our
organizing tool.

4. • We decided to
launch at the
National Book
Festival.
• Sharon (MA) made
bookmarks.
• Andrea (MD)
launched early and
her blog posts were
awesome!

7. • Rocco (NY) started
pitching the idea to
Library Journal and
of course had a drink
made after his book.
• Kate (RI) stole all the
best descriptions for
her website.

9. Logo Creation and Evolution

10. General Use
Font: Courgette
Color: #cc0000
Canva.com

11. Instagram

12. Twitter version

13. Facebook

14. CANVA.com

18. Building the Route 1 Reads website
• The domain was debated with the
participating Centers for a time, but finally
settled on Route1Reads.org
• Site was hosted on Rackspace Cloud Sites with
CT Humanities other sites. CT Humanities pays
a flat monthly fee for the server, so hosting
another modestly-sized site was no hardship
and kept the overheads down in the
experimental stage.

20. • The build was made in
WordPress, a very flexible open
source platform for building
websites
• Theme: Make (free version)
– a really basic theme
• Plug-in: Leaflet Maps Marker (a
free version of Maps Marker)
which allows for a map with pins
connected to each state’s Center
for the Book and a description of
the book selected by that state.

21. Route1Reads.org
• A live site allowed for distribution of
bookmarks with the Route1Reads.org URL at
the National Book Festival.
• Since these titles are in place for a year, no
changes have been made to the site’s content
and hasn’t really been touched since then.

22. Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Empire State Florida
Georgia Maine Maryland Massachusetts New Hampshire
New Jersey NC
Pennsylvania Rhode Island SC Virginia

23. Big Questions & Next Steps
• Was a website useful for participating Centers for
the Book?
• Does it create value for this project?
• We have a nascent program and we can talk
about how we got to where we are and what we
think we will be doing moving forward.
• We are thinking of mysteries as our next unifying
Rt 1 genre. Sharon received a lot of positive
feedback about this at NEIBA!

24. Thank you!
• Lisa Comstock | lcomstock@cthumanities.org
Manager of IT Services &
Connecticut Center for the Book
• Kate Lentz | kate@ribook.org
Director, Rhode Island Center for the Book
• Curtis Rogers | crogers@statelibrary.sc.gov
Coordinator, SC Center for the Book & SC State
Library Communications Director