Librarians have much to Offer in Solving the Mystery of Reading, submitted by Lawrence J. (Lou) Duggan
The study of reading is a relatively new discipline emerging from the broader area of book history. Influential texts in the field such as Richard Altick’s, English Common Reader: A social history of the mass reading public, 1800-1900 (Altick, 1983) and Robert Darnton’s, The kiss of Lamourette : reflections in cultural history (Darnton, 1990) have opened a huge and complicated field of study that now involves academics in history, communications, psychology, philosophy and literature among others. Librarians also have a key role to play in this study, as much of what is used as evidence for interpreting reading activities is either at their fingertips or begs for a librarian’s skill set to decipher.
Many APLA members may be aware of such organizations as SHARP (the Society for the History of Authorship Reading and Publishing), which has been in existence since 1991 and holds an annual conference that is a primary venue for reading historians to expose their work to the world’s academic community. Some may not be aware, however, of the Reading Experience Database (RED) created in 1996 by a British group of reading historians at the UK Open University. The RED group’s mission is “to accumulate as much data as possible about the reading experiences of British subjects from 1450 to 1945,” where a reading experience is defined as “a recorded engagement with a written or printed text, beyond the mere fact of possession.”1 It was this group, in partnership with the Institute of English Studies, University of London, which organized the first international conference devoted specifically to the history of reading. The conference, “Evidence of Reading, Reading the Evidence”, was held on 21-23 July 2008 in London, and I am very grateful to APLA for helping to fund my participation in the conference through the General Activities Fund (Duggan & MacDonald, 2008).
The theme of the conference centered on methodologies for studying reading. Since the beginning, researchers have wondered how we can learn anything about such an enigmatic and solitary activity as reading merely by watching others. Postures and eye movements tell us only a limited amount about a person’s interaction with a text. Studying our own reading is also difficult because we cannot gain enough critical distance to be objective and to see what this activity means – partly because the medium and the message are so intertwined (Price, 2004). Some of the various methodologies that have been popular to date include studies of anecdotal evidence, marginalia, personal library collections, book clubs, and the records of lending libraries. However, the best methods for understanding this cultural and highly personal phenomenon may be yet to be discovered or tried. The first of three keynote addresses at the London conference addressed what can really be learned (or not) about reading from looking at photographs and paintings (Flint, 2008). And the second keynote raised eyebrows when the highly respected researcher Jonathan Rose stated that “the only pattern to be found [in the study of marginalia] is that there is no pattern.” (Rose, 2008). It is also important to note that reading historians are seemingly united in the opinion that the “mere fact of possession” of a book or scrap of paper that contains writing cannot be viewed as conclusive evidence that a person actually read it.
So where will the truly informative evidence of reading come from? Like so many other things in life it will come from hard work and inventive thinking, and also from those who are situated with their eyes open to see the evidence when it appears. Librarians are in a unique position to offer some key forms of evidence. Ethical considerations of personal privacy notwithstanding, librarians can easily and effectively tell the “who, what, when and where?” of reading, at least as it pertains to the users of libraries. They also are very well situated to help discover the “why and how?” of reading. Academic librarians are very knowledgeable about the process of publishing, why academics read certain publications, and how they use them for citation as driven by the peer review process. Public librarians display a keen sense of the wants of the reading public, as shown in their collection management schemes and promotional materials. Staff in special libraries often foster close relationships with individual users, and understand their reading habits in great detail.
Reading is nowhere as culturally ubiquitous as it is in libraries, and reading historians fully understand the potential value that librarians hold in this subject area. Never have I felt so well-respected among academics as I did at this conference, even as I was surrounded by many of the leaders in the field. All who attended seemed to hold a universal admiration for their colleagues in all disciplines, given that so much remains to be learned and from so many areas of expertise. The conference concluded with a call for more of everything: more case studies, citation analyses and investigations of subject areas that study more kinds of text, situations, and ways of reading. This reckoning occurs because the larger theories of reading do not yet stand up to scrutiny. They need to be developed further and fine-tuned with more evidence before they can be tested confidently against the broader reality. Here is an opportunity for the academic side of librarianship to shine and for librarians to help the world to understand a huge part of itself. Reading is far too important in our society to ignore as a cultural phenomenon, and librarians can provide both evidence and important insights that will contribute greatly to the understanding of its history.
1 For further details or to view the RED database see http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/.
Altick, R. D. (1983). English common reader: A social history of the mass reading public, 1800-1900. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Darnton, R. (1990). The kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in cultural history (1st ed.). New York; Markham, Ont: Norton; Penguin.
Duggan, L. J., & MacDonald, B. H. (2008). Reading science: Evidence from the career of Edwin Gilpin, mining engineer. Evidence of Reading, Reading the Evidence, Institute of English Studies, University of London.
Flint, K. (2008). Books in photographs. Evidence of Reading, Reading the Evidence, Institute of English Studies, University of London.
Price, L. (2004). Reading. Book History, 7, 303-320.
Rose, J. (2008). Altick's map: The new historiography of reading. Evidence of Reading, Reading the Evidence, Institute of English Studies, University of London.