1. 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

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

3. Outline Studies of Reading Ethnography of Reading
Reading in Applied Contexts

4. ___________________________________
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)

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

8. “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

9. “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

10. 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

11. 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’

12. 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)

13. 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)

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