History / Ethnography of Reading Image credit: Victor GAD 549 Reading Interests of Adults History / Ethnography of Reading Marija Dalbello Rutgers School of Communication, Information, and Library Studies dalbello@scils.rutgers.edu http://www.scils.rutgers.edu/~dalbello

‘Reading as a form of behavior operating as a complex intervention in the ongoing social life of actual social subjects’

Outline Studies of Reading Ethnography of Reading Reading in Applied Contexts

___________________________________ 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)

Ethnographic approach to reading ___________________________________ (Boyarin 1992) reading as sociocultural act (Biblical / Talmudic reading vs. European reading in the social space of the erotic) localized practice (European monastic reading and reading for pleasure, Hebrew of the biblical and talmudic periods) study of texts reflecting these practices study of formative processes

illocutionary / perlocutionary force of the act of reading reading as speech act illocutionary / 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” “Reading” as spoken and described in the Bible _______________________________________ Boyarin: Placing Reading

literal obligation to read a document reading as public act reading as speech act literal obligation to read a document reading as public act collectivity and orality in reading “Reading” as spoken and described in the Bible _______________________________________ Boyarin: Placing Reading

“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

“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 tradition of reading as monastic study

Ethnographic study of reading Ethnographic characterization of reading in European culture suggests that reading occupies a sociocultural 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

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 danger of content of information vs. access to information Role of research in understanding the process of reading as a form of behavior operating as a complex intervention in the ongoing social life of actual social subjects’

Can you help me find a good book? Library as ‘Reading Institution’ ___________________________________ Can you help me find a good book? Reader’s Advisory 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 historically, scorn for pleasure reading (even today, RA not advertised)

Library as ‘Reading Institution’ ___________________________________ Ask here for a good book. Reader’s 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, 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)

Library as ‘Reading Institution’ ___________________________________ Ask here for a good book. Reader’s Advisory tools: NoveList (http://NOVELIST.EPNET.COM, EBSCO dbase, by subscription); Pearl, Now Read This; Genreflecting; Reader’s Robot (http://www.tnrdlib.bc.ca/rr.html); Reader’s Advisor interview: longitudinal, neutral questioning technique, closing the interview with invitation for feedback, librarian’s knowledge of fictional genres and titles