In today’s society, there is a growing group of children with poor reading skills. Good reading skills are essential for accessing public information and becoming part of society. School and public librarians have a significant role in promoting reading for children. The librarians work towards the same goal: to promote reading for children, but they also have different missions to deal with in the work of promoting reading. The aim of this study is to contribute knowledge about how librarians at school and public libraries reflect on strategies for promoting reading among children aged 6-12, and it also explores their perspectives on their competencies, focusing on similarities and differences between the mission of school and public librarians. We adopted a qualitative approach conducting semi-structured interviews with five school librarians and five public librarians. The results were analyzed from two theoretical points of views, the literature pedagogical theory which include three different strategies and the other is based on a competence model, supplemented by the concept of competence development.

Our results show that the different strategies expressed by the school and public librarians, in terms of varying the range of materials and readingpromotion activities, are rather complementary. The study shows that public librarians had more chances to develop their competence in reading promotion. Our study also identifies a knowledge gap regarding the relationship between printed and digital materials among the librarians. There is a potential for increased collaboration between school and public librarians to improve children’s reading development.