Every employer, school, library, college and local authority is being asked to get involved for the launch of the National Year of Reading.

The 2008 National Year of Reading is a year-long celebration of reading, in all its forms. It will help to build a greater national passion for reading for children, families and adult learners alike.

The Year will encourage people to read in businesses, homes, and communities around the country, providing new opportunities to read and helping people to access help and support through schools and libraries.

Campaigns and activities throughout the year will inspire everyone to read more, with a focus on reluctant readers, those with low confidence, and boys and dads.

The campaign suggests simple steps that can help encourage more people to read. Employers can make their work place more reader-friendly by turning their old smoking rooms into mini-libraries and arranging places for quiet reading. Parents can spend ten minutes a day reading with their children. Adults can join their local library or a reading group, or start reading a newspaper or magazine on the way to work.

A key priority is to develop a legacy which embeds reading, in all its forms, in our social culture and endures long beyond the end of the campaign itself, which has been allocated £3.7 million.

Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, said: "I want every school, college, library and employer to pledge to join in with the Year of Reading by signing up online. If local communities, authors, broadcasters, celebrities and employers come on board we can really bring about a long-term change in the nation's attitudes to reading."

"Books are at the heart of the Year's activities, but all reading counts. Newspapers, magazines, poetry, song lyrics, screenplays and blogs will all feature as part of the Year's activities."

"There has been a huge amount of attention recently on reading at school, and rightly so. Every child must be able to read and write confidently; that is one of the highest priorities of this government. We are investing in high-quality phonics materials, free books for babies and children, catch-up support and small group tuition to help everybody achieve that goal."

The National Year of Reading will also showcase artistic production - every variety of spoken, sung and written words. Artists will be essential to extending the impact of the Year beyond 'conventional' and established audiences for reading.

In March 2007, the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's Library and Information Update reported on a survey of 4,000 readers, which found that a third of those questioned read "challenging literature" in order to seem well-read, even though they couldn't follow what the book was about.

An international study of ten year olds' reading habits, the PIRLS 2006 report for England, found that, compared to the previous study in 2001, there had been a significant fall in the proportion of children in England reading stories and novels on a daily basis.

There was a highly significant difference in the proportions of boys and girls in England who claimed to read stories or novels every day. This includes 41 per cent of girls but just 23 per cent of boys.

The continued growth of technology is certainly changing the way people read and use information. The OFCOM report The Communications Market 2007 found that worldwide a new blog is created every second. In the UK 45% use webpages and blogs as a means to publish their own original material, and over one in ten comment on current affairs and political issues on their homepages and weblogs.

Ed Balls concluded: "We're at an important point in the history of reading. Changes in technology are redefining the way that we read, write and communicate, and opening up the world of words to new audiences."

"Anyone can be an author, publisher or critic online, as well as a reader. But at the same time we're seeing huge interest in traditional forms of reading, with the help of publishing phenomena like Harry Potter which are rekindling young people's love of books."

The article The power of words originally appeared on 999 Today