585 Reading Interests of Adults

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Image credit Victor GAD
585 Reading Interests of Adults The Cultures
of Reading Reading as Social Practice History /
Ethnography of Reading
Marija Dalbello Rutgers School of Communication,
Information, and Library Studies dalbello_at_scils.ru
tgers.edu http//www.scils.rutgers.edu/dalbello
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Reading as a form of behavior is operating
as a complex intervention in the ongoing social
life of actual social subjects
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• Outline
• ______________________________
• Approaches to the Study of Reading
• Ethnography of Reading
• Reading in Applied Contexts Library as
  Reading Institution

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Studies of Reading _____________________________
______ (Wiegand 1997) Literacy studies
(contexts of literacy practices, rise of the
vernacular, authorship) Print culture history
(reading practices affect production
distribution of texts reading rooted in print
as artefactual object) Reader-response theory
(reading act as process of interpretation,
reading integrated with life history) Ethnography
of reading (reading as communal activity,
practiced in shared institutions and shared
interpretive frameworks)
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• Ethnographic approach to reading
• ___________________________________
• (Boyarin 1992)
• Reading as sociocultural act localized
  practice - specific to particular contexts and
  times
• Biblical / Talmudic reading
• Practice of reading in the European context
  (monastic reading vs. reading for pleasure)
• Pre-literate to literate societies
• study of texts reflecting these practices
• study of formative processes

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Reading as spoken and described in the
Bible ________________ Boyarin Placing
Reading

• reading as speech act
• Perlocutionary force of the act of reading
• Reading as speech act of command, with
  perlocutionary effect of obedience
• Reading as proclamation, declaration, a summons
• Searle, Austin taxonomy of speech

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Reading as spoken and described in the
Bible ________________ Boyarin Placing
Reading

• reading as speech act
• Literal obligation to read a document
• Reading as public act
• Collectivity and orality in reading

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Reading as practiced in European
culture _______________ Boyarin Placing
Reading

• reading as passive reception
• Reader consuming text (silently or orally) alone
  
• Act of reading has no immediate public
  consequences
• Silent reading
• Transference of reading from public to private
  spaces
• Saenger, Space Between Words The Origins of
  Silent Reading

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Reading as practiced in European
culture ________________ Boyarin Placing
Reading

• reading as site of erotic tension
• Ill-fated readers Paolo Francesca (Dante)
• Moral implications of reading for pleasure (in
  opposition to monastic?)
• vs. tradition of reading as monastic study

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Ethnographic characterization of reading in
European culture suggests that reading occupies a
socio-cultural space entirely different from the
one that it did in the Biblical and Rabbinic
culture. It is not a speech-act, public, and
liturgical in nature, but passive, private or
semi-private, and belonging to the sphere of
leisure and pleasure.
Ethnographic study of reading
________________ Boyarin Ethnography
of Reading, p. 24
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• Reading in Applied Contexts ______________________
  _____________
• (Wiegand 1997)
• Role of libraries in promoting reading
• RA
• Programming
• Understanding of readers and their uses of and
  gratifications from reading
• Role of LIS programs in teaching about reading
• Information allows to avoid complexities
  involving matters of race, class, sexual
  orientation, age and gender distinctions
• Content of information vs. access to information
  (library as reading institution)
• Role of research in understanding the process of
  reading as
• Form of behavior operating as a complex
  intervention in the ongoing social life of actual
  social subjects

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• Library as Reading Institution
• ___________________________________
• Can you help me find a good book?
• Readers Advisory
• Historically, scorn for pleasure reading (even
  today, RA not advertised)
• History of RA services
• Pre-WW2 adult education program, self
  improvement
• Post-WW2 disappeared
• Recent years renaissance
• From didactic activity aimed at moral
  transformation to fiction guidance with no
  attempt to improve patrons reading tastes

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• Library as Reading Institution
• ___________________________________
• Ask here for a good book
• Readers Advisory
• Tools, methods of conducting RA interview, staff
  training, promotion of the service to the patrons
• Programming passive vs. active methods
• Passive methods eliciting reader tastes
  (circulation, surveys?), book recommendations,
  consultation with colleagues, new fiction racks,
  book reviews/patron popularity, posting of a best
  sellers list, genre shelving, book displays,
  notices announcing new arrivals/new fiction,
  bookmarks, booklists, and annotated
  bibliographies, newsletters, sponsored book clubs
• Active methods RA interview (in-depth process,
  follow-up, use of tools)

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• Library as Reading Institution
• ___________________________________
• Readers Advisory
• Tools NoveList (http//NOVELIST.EPNET.COM,
  EBSCO dbase, by subscription) Pearl, Now Read
  This Genreflecting Readers Robot
  (http//www.tnrdlib.bc.ca/rr.html) Readers
  Advisor, etc. (cf. online sources page)
• Interview neutral questioning technique,
  closing the interview with invitation for
  feedback, longitudinal, librarians knowledge of
  fictional genres and titles