The celebration of International Book Year in 1972 provided an impetus to increasing the number of people who read throughout the world. Four themes for that program were the promotion of the reading habit, development of book production and distribution, promotion of books in the service of education and peace, and encouragement of authorship and translation. It was a year for stocktaking and for analyzing three interrelated factors: literacy, availability of books, and extent of readership among the literate population. The studies that were carried out revealed that the absolute number of illiterates has continued to increase, that books are not uniformly available throughout the world, and that there are 600 million nonreaders among the literate population. In evaluating the year, the General Conference of UNESCO, the sponsoring agency, decided to maintain the initiative with a long-term program of action at the national, regional, and international levels and to retain the four original themes. Promotion of reading remains one of the foremost objectives and is dealt with in three major ways: instilling love for books, conducting studies of books and reading, and bringing books to the public. At the international level, the International Reading Association is playing a vital role in promoting readership. (TJ)