Popular Reading Research Articles

Selecting Software with Caution: An Empirical Evaluation of Popular Beginning Reading Software for Children with Early Literacy Difficulties

It seems appropriate, if not necessary, to use empirically supported criteria to evaluate reading software applications. This study's purpose was to develop a research-based evaluation framework and review selected beginning reading software that might be used with struggling beginning readers. Thirty-one products were reviewed according to criteria that addressed interface design, instructional design, and beginning reading content. Findings suggested that the software sample generally did not meet the evaluation standards. Results also indicated that software rating highly on interface design tended to rate lower on beginning reading content. Based on these results, implications for practice and next steps for research are also discussed.

HIGH VISIBILITY, LOW PROFILE: THE SHIʿA IN OMAN UNDER SULTAN QABOOS

Since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, one of the most popular reading grids of Middle East politics has been the increased impact of the Shiʿi issue on the national political agendas of Arab states. This article focuses on the place of one of the less studied Shiʿi groups, the Shiʿa of Oman, who represent around three percent of the national population, in the nation-building project initiated by Sultan Qaboos since 1970 to maintain political stability and legitimize his power. I argue that the special relationship the Shiʿa have maintained with the ruling elite in Oman and the prominent role some of them are enjoying in the Omani economy help explain their weak insertion into transnational Shiʿi networks in the Gulf and the fact that they have never questioned the validity of the Omani nation under Qaboos as a political framework. But the socioeconomic changes caused by the end of the rent-based welfare-state model has led recently to an increase in mutual prejudices and social grievances. The Shiʿa, because of their high socioeconomic visibility, are likely to find themselves at the center of other groups’ complaints.

Menzies and the New Chinoiserie

Gavin Menzies’ ‘1434: The Year a Magnificent Chinese Fleet Sailed to Italy and Ignited the Renaissance’ is a parody of historical scholarship that purports to offer insight into the critical stages of early global modernity. Cast in a flawed East/West paradigm that has shaped much of Euro-American scholarship, 1434 enjoys significant popular and political readership internationally and eclipses recent scholarship that would allow a more nuanced and integrated understanding of our shared early modern history. This review article challenges the Sinocentrism of Menzies and others, and suggests a broader Eurasian perspective for understanding the interplay of societies that defined innovation and creativity at the start of the modern era.

Applied Classics: Ancient Readings of Modern Popular Culture

Classics: Ancient Readings of Modern Popular Francis Bacon famously wrote of the printing press that it the appearance and state of things throughout the world (Spedding et al, eds, The Works of Francis Bacon, Vol. 4, 114). The five scholars in this panel argue that the rise of marks another major paradigm shift. Through examinations of online role-playing games, internet Japanese anime and manga, and American graphic novels, these presenters examine the complexities of reading and readership in the modern digital age. They demonstrate that new visual genres are changing the way we envision the past, and they emphasize the continued influence of literature upon boundary-breaking popular genres. Pedagogical and scholarly interest in readership and digital culture is flourishing; nevertheless, comparative studies of literature and popular culture are relatively few. The focus of this panel, therefore, is on the relationship between high literature and popular visual genres. Themes of Applied Classics: Ancient Readings of Modern Popular Culture include: How can a genre's response to the past reveal its cultural standing? How might examples drawn from popular genres fuel class discussions of the ancient world? What perspectives on classical culture do the generation steeped in digital culture bring? Has digital culture, in fact, changed the way we envision the past? And how does our understanding of the past inform the way we interact with digital culture? In Gear and Theme in homeric epic and the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game, Panelist #1 coins the phrase Applied Classics and persuasively demonstrates that Homeric epic can help us to understand better ethical decisions and the construction of meaning in role-playing games such as The Lord of the Rings Online (15 min.). In (Post-)Primary: Video Game Narratives and Homeric Epic, Panelist #2 finds compelling similarities between the narrative strategies of Homeric epic and the video game Dragon-Age: Origins, arguing that the multiple perspectives and entry points in a game such as Dragon-Age allow us to unravel more fully the construction and reception of meanings in the Epic Cycle (15 min.). Panelist #3, in Classical tradition and visual culture in the creation of online communities, evaluates narrative structures in online communities. The panelist demonstrates the continued significance of theclassical tradition and argues that members of online communities frequently employ classical stories as touchstones to define and limit the members of their groups (15 min.). In Xerxes, Lost City in the Western Desert: Allusions in Fullmetal Alchemist, Panelist #4 evaluates the classical terms, stories, and motifs in the Japanese anime and manga versions of Fullmetal Alchemist. The panelist argues that the Japanese fantasy and science fiction genre employs Greek and Roman myths to lend the fantasies an exotic otherworldly quality (15 min.). In Juvenal's Graffiti: 'Applied Classics' and Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen, Panelist #5 examines the classical allusions in the graphic novel Watchmen. The panelist demonstrates that Watchmen shares motifs with Roman satire and argues that Juvenal himself functions as an implicit figure of moral authority in the text (15 min.). These five presenters thus investigate popular readings of the past and show the continued significance of Greek and Roman literature in the digital era. The co-chairs of the session will lead the discussion, which will follow the delivered papers. Given the visual and digital nature of the panel, we require audio-visual equipment in the form of a computer, LCD projector, and screen.

Why Your Academic Library Needs a Popular Reading Collection Now More Than Ever

Do popular reading materials belong in college and university libraries? Although some librarians think not, others believe there are compelling reasons for including them. The trend toward user-focused libraries, the importance of attracting patrons to libraries in the digital age, and, most importantly, the need to promote literacy at a time when it has reached its lowest levels are all reasons why academic librarians are reconsidering their ideas about popular reading materials. Librarians who decide to implement a leisure reading or browsing collection should consider a number of key issues.

The Business of Rhyming: Burma-Shave Poetry and Popular Culture

This essay uses the example of the long‐lived and popular Burma‐Shave advertising campaign to argue that literary critics should extend their attention to the vast amounts of poetry written for advertising purposes in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Burma‐Shave campaign—which featured sequences of rhyming billboards erected along highways in the United States from 1926 to 1963—not only cultivated characteristics of literary and even avantgarde writing but effectively pressured that literariness into serving the commercial marketplace. At the same time, as the campaign's reception history shows, the spirit of linguistic play and innovation at the core of Burma‐Shave's poetry unintentionally distracted consumers' attention away from the commercial message and toward the creative forces of reading and writing poetry. A striking example of popular reading practices at work, this history shows how poetry created even in the most commercial contexts might resist the commodification that many twentieth‐century poets and critics feared. (MC)

Labor and Women's Liberation: Popular Readings of The Feminine Mystique

This article explores a series of discursive intersections between women's employment and feminism by investigating Betty Friedan's classic book, The Feminine Mystique, and its popular uptake. Analysis illustrates that The Feminine Mystique envisioned women finding fulfillment not in corporate careers but instead in civic-minded pursuits and, more importantly, through developing thoughtful liberal subjectivity. In contrast, recent mainstream news referencing the book framed it as feminism's origin, a clarion call to work, and used these connections to condemn all feminism as bourgeois careerism. The analysis argues that antifeminist and neoliberal ideologies color contemporary uses of the text, narrowing the range of issues addressed by the book and by women's liberation. Ultimately, the article contends that feminists should reclaim the articulation of feminist and labor politics in Friedan's book in order to contest current constructions of neoliberal governmentality.

"So Long as I Can Read": Farm Women’s Reading Experiences in Depression-Era South Dakota

Abstract During the Great Depression, with conditions grim, entertainment scarce, and educational opportunities limited, many South Dakota farm women relied on reading to fill emotional, social, and informational needs. To read to any degree, these rural women had to overcome multiple obstacles. Extensive reading (whether books, farm journals, or newspapers) was limited to those who had access to publications and could make time to read. The South Dakota Free Library Commission was valuable in circulating reading materials to the state’s rural population. In the 1930s the commission collaborated with the USDA ’ s Extension Service in a popular reading project geared toward South Dakota farm women. This "Reading in the Home" program greatly increased reading opportunities and motivations. Of particular interest to rural women were tales of pioneer life featuring strong protagonists.Through these stories, farm women found validation and encouragement to persevere. Reading also broadened horizons and challenged assumptions. For the depression-era farm woman, reading books and other materials provided recreation, instruction, and inspiration in a discouraging time.

"So Long as I Can Read": Farm Women's Reading Experiences in Depression-Era South Dakota

During the Great Depression, with conditions grim, entertainment scarce, and educational opportunities limited, many South Dakota farm women relied on reading to fill emotional, social, and informational needs. To read to any degree, these rural women had to overcome multiple obstacles. Extensive reading (whether books, farm journals, or newspapers) was limited to those who had access to publications and could make time to read. The South Dakota Free Library Commission was valuable in circulating reading materials to the state's rural population. In the 1930s the commission collaborated with the USDA's Extension Service in a popular reading project geared toward South Dakota farm women. This "Reading in the Home" program greatly increased reading opportunities and motivations. Of particular interest to rural women were tales of pioneer life featuring strong protagonists. Through these stories, farm women found validation and encouragement to persevere. Reading also broadened horizons and challenged assumptions. For the depression-era farm woman, reading books and other materials provided recreation, instruction, and inspiration in a discouraging time.

Popular Reading Collections in Public University Libraries: A Survey of Three Southeastern States

Offering a separate, popular reading collection can be a valuable public service in academic libraries. Popular reading is also known as leisure reading, recreational reading, and reading for pleasure. These phrases are synonyms for an interest in reading bestsellers, mysteries, romance novels, biographies, graphic novels, humor, self-help, or popular nonfiction, among other literature categories. This article examines the survey data of popular reading collections in the public universities of three southeastern states. It also discusses the popular reading collection at the author's library, also located at a southeastern public university, and analyzes the data from both circulation records and a survey of more than 100 patrons who used the collection during the fall 2008 semester.

When Worlds Collide: Dismantling the Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection at the University of New Brunswick, Saint John

The Ward Chipman Library on the Saint John campus of the University of New Brunswick is home to a freestanding collection of over 32,000 science fiction and fantasy works, including reference material, primary works, magazines, and mass market/pulp items from most of the 20th century. Some scholars, including Dr. Farah Mendlesohn of Middlesex University, have described it as one of the best in the world. Active development of this collection ceased in 2000 however, and in recent years it has been primarily used as a popular reading collection, with little academic use. A decision to reduce the collection to one designed solely for academic research was met with great protest, and subsequently the collection was weeded and the remainder moved to storage to free up space for other library initiatives. The article describes the collection, the reasons for the proposed and actual reductions, the protests, and the valuable lessons learned from the experience, including the importance of collection development and management policies, the importance of involving the user community to ensure that everyone's needs are met, and the tensions that sometimes arise when intellectual and practical concerns collide.

"Not so much art as a financial operation": Conrad and Metropolitan Magazine

"Not so much art as a financial operation"Conrad and Metropolitan Magazine Laura L. Davis Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 2. Metropolitan Magazine, February 1918, cover. Illustration by E. L. Crompton. [End Page 244] Metropolitan Magazine (see figure 2) was launched in 1895 during what Richard Ohmann calls the "inaugural moment" of a "national mass culture" in the United States, purveyed especially through the twenty mass-circulation magazines in print by 1900 (23, 29). Although for its first fifteen years Metropolitan lagged behind circulation giants of the era, such as Cosmopolitan, McClure's, and Munsey's, Alfred A. Knopf, at Doubleday, Page Company, wrote to Joseph Conrad in 1913, "I am fairly convinced that the Metropolitan is going to be pretty soon one of the three or four really important popular magazines that we have."1 That year, copies sold numbered four hundred thousand, with the editor claiming total readership of 1 million or more, a circulation that had it pulling level with or ahead of its competitors.2 Like its peer "mixed function" magazines, Metropolitan treated public affairs, current events, and other topics of general interest, along with fiction (Reed 76). To attract an audience, it chose a title embodying the notion that the city was a wide, encompassing area and offering all readers in a huge country peppered with small towns access to those amenities available to city dwellers—including ideas and culture.3 By the early 1910s, readers were experienced consumers of topical issues, having digested the muckraking journalism of the century's first decade, a time in which "[e]ditors now posited readers bold and urbane enough to look into the social abyss or at its shabby margins" so they were in a position "to see, to know, to judge, to imagine remedies" (Ohmann 285). They also had had for a generation access to literary culture through publications that were more affordable than literary magazines such as Harper's Monthly Magazine [End Page 245] (Ohmann 6). Metropolitan's 1 million readers thus experienced Conrad's work mediated through their position as popular readers, their relationship with the magazine, and the packaging of each issue, a form for his work probably more familiar to them than that of the bound book. As they began an issue of Metropolitan, president H. J. (Henry James) Whigham set the tone with his vigorously Progressive editorials. Managing editor Carl Hovey then presented them with six or seven stories in each number, selected according to his and Whigham's definition of the Metropolitan reader. During their decade of leadership at the magazine in the 1910s, they determined to pull ahead of their competition by strengthening both its political voice and its fiction. In doing so, they drew Conrad into a relationship with the magazine—one beneficial to both sides. The Evolution of Metropolitan Magazine Starting out as a "naughty picture" magazine selling "sex sensationalism," Metropolitan in its earliest issues depended on photographs of stage actresses, art models, and bloomered and bathing-suited beauties, while giving little attention to politics or fiction (Mott 4: 47; 5: 145). Despite its lack of political thrust through the first decade of the twentieth century, from the beginning the magazine followed the career of Theodore Roosevelt, first featuring him at work as police commissioner of New York in October 1895 (Parker). As it matured, Metropolitan continued to define itself among popular magazines in terms of its public responsibility and its place as a publisher of fiction. At the end of the muckraking era, Metropolitan avowed that it had deliberately avoided such journalism, but asserted an interest in issues of social justice without sensationalizing. At the same time, it declared a dedication to print "[t]he best short-story writers of this country and England," as it included Joseph Conrad in a list of thirty-four writers—most of them not widely recognized today ("Magazine" 556).4 However, while Metropolitan signified its commitment to fiction by trading on Conrad's name, it had not yet contracted with him for a story, and it would be two years before his first work would appear in the magazine, when "Prince Roman" was published as "The Aristocrat" in...

Websites of note

Websites of note

Hugo Münsterberg and the Origins of Vocational Guidance

Hugo Münsterberg was among the most famous psychologists in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Despite his preeminence and associations with prominent leaders in several disciples, including Frank Parsons, his abrasive personality and unpopular politics led to his work being largely ignored during the 20th century. One such work is H. Münsterberg's (1910c) Vocation and Learning: A Popular Reading Course, which represents an early trait‐and‐factor psychological model of vocation. This triangular model suggests that people and vocations are composed of thinking, feeling, and willing dimensions that must be aligned to find the most suitable vocation for the person.

Preadolescents' Self-concept and Popular Magazine Preferences

This article draws on a larger study of Canadian children's sense of self and media habits, 223 children in all (112 boys, 111 girls; 10- to 13-year-olds; M = 11.17y). Participants completed a questionnaire on their self-descriptions and reading habits over a 3-year period. Content analysis of the responses showed great diversity in preadolescents' magazine reading habits and self-descriptions. Results showed that across all ages, girls preferred mainly fashion and entertainment magazines, whereas boys preferred mainly magazines concerning sports and video games. Results suggest that preadolescents' popular magazine reading habits may differ according to age and gender, and may reflect their self-perceptions. Educational implications for critical media literacy are discussed.

Turkish Men and the History of Ottoman Women

This paper discusses the study of Ottoman dynastic history through women’s writings, such as harem women’s personal letter correspondence, women’s harem memoirs and recollections, and foreign women travelers’ accounts, published in popular historical magazines in Turkey during the 1950s and 60s. The paper also considers the popular nature of the publications that featured these writings and their significance in the framework of the changing nationalist discourse and corresponding changes in Turkish historiography during the 1950s. It shows that articles based on women’s writings revealed intimate aspects of the Ottoman elite’s relationships in general and of Ottoman women in particular, and suggests that their publication in popular magazines played an important role in re-imagining the Turkish woman in the framework of the post-Kemalist nationalist discourse. It concludes that women’s writings, used as primary sources by Turkish historians, provided an insider’s point of view on the secretive life of the harem and its inhabitants and attracted a popular readership, thus exposing wider audiences to an Ottoman-centered historical discourse, and ultimately played an important role in the writing of Ottoman women’s history.

The terrorists of today are the heroes of tomorrow: the anti-British and anti-American insurgencies in Iraqi history

The anti-British rebellion of 1920 has become one of the most important foundational myths of Iraqi nationalism. It has been the subject of poetry, theatre, film and folklore and continues to be commemorated and evoked as a symbol of the Iraqi nation state and of Iraqi pride and independence. This popular reading of events ignores the realities of the rebellion: that it was a mid-Euphrates, rather than a national, affair and that the motivations, to begin with at least, were far more personal and economic than national. Nevertheless, the rebellion's memory has acquired a hallowed place in Iraqi nationalist discourse. This article will focus on two points: first, to place the rebellion of 1920 in its correct historical context; second, it will be argued that today's anti-American insurgency will make the same historiographical journey from being a tumultuous and localised event that had no shortage of detractors to becoming a defining symbol of Iraqi nationalism. As will be shown, there is already much evidence to suggest that the process has already begun. The foreign troop presence cannot remain indefinitely and when, sooner or later, Coalition forces withdraw we may well see the development of a narrative that credits the ‘resistance’ for gaining Iraqi independence; in other words, the ‘resistance’ today may well become the foundational nationalist myth of the new Iraq.

The History of Havana

This concise history of Havana from colonial times to the present is the first book from the Palgrave Essential Histories series dedicated to an urban history rather than a national history. (Previous volumes have focused on Germany, Denmark, Venezuela, and Cuba, among others.) The emphasis on Havana is particularly interesting within this context as the authors tend to conflate Cuba’s general history with that of the capital city, a tendency that has become increasingly common in recent years as Havana has once again become the public face of the island. The authors, the American novelist Dick Cluster and Cuban political scientist Rafael Hernández, also set forth to free Havana’s history from the ideological lenses that have often colored its historical representations since Castro’s forces entered the capital in 1959. Instead, they advocate a binocular view through which Havana can be considered as a global city at the crossroads of multiple sociocultural trajectories, particularly emphasizing its interrelations with the United States.The book is eminently readable and succeeds in providing an accessible introduction to the city’s history. As neither author is a professional urbanist, there is a tendency to deemphasize the city’s spatial and economic history, particularly with regards to the colonial period. Instead, the authors highlight dramatic moments in the narrative such as the 1762 British invasion or the 1844 Escalera rebellion, while featuring vignettes of colorful characters that provide a sense of the city’s sensibility. These include well-known national heroes such as Maceo or Martí but also literary characters such as Cirilo Villaverde’s Cecilia Valdés and Genoveva Santa Cruz. An emphasis on popular culture continues in the discussion of the twentieth century, where we are introduced to myriad musical traditions from son to rumba along with an extensive discussion of cinematic culture and the influence of American styles and commodities. Many of the individuals featured in the first half of the twentieth century are figures who traveled extensively between the island and the United States, such as the musician Chano Pozo, whose contributions to Afro-Cuban bebop are as legendary as his shady murder in Spanish Harlem. These give way to revolutionary heroes including great leaders such as Fidel Castro and Che Guevara, along with influential cultural icons such as the cineaste Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, whose representations of Havana society are extensively covered. However, the authors also include portraits of lesser-known figures interviewed expressly for this volume, including individuals such as the poet Dulce María Loynaz and her extended family. These characters appear across multiple chapters, allowing readers to follow their lives within the context of Havana’s twentieth-century history. For example, one can track Juan Valdés Paz from poverty-stricken child to revolutionary activist to disgraced philosophy professor at the University of Havana to relieved survivor of Hurricane Wilma. The use of oral histories thus not only enlivens the narrative but also provides a skeletal structure that is quite effective in providing a human face to the history of the city.An emphasis on subaltern and women’s history also pervades several chapters. The authors ruminate extensively on the active role of Afro-Cubans from the colonial period onward, providing sociological data as well as anecdotal portraits of individuals such as the poet-insurrectionary Plácido. They discuss everyday activities of women in the nineteenth century as well as the history of prostitution from the eighteenth century to the contemporary development of jineterismo. While there is a general condemnation of the sex trade, the authors also paint sympathetic portraits of figures such as the cavalier pimp Alberto Yarini, whose 1910 assassination by French competitors bolstered popular nationalism. The history of street cuisine forms another element of this popular history with linkages to the present day.The narrative is supplemented by a series of photographs, etchings, and maps illustrating key individuals and places mentioned in the text. The colonial period is underrepresented here, as are moments of social conflict or economic deprivation; this serves to present a view of Havana as a romantic, safe, and mysterious city. The book also includes a bibliographic essay suggesting further reading. The essay is overly general, however, showing an awareness of recent historiography but deemphasizing specialized monographs or targeted articles. While this decision probably reflects the desire to provide an introductory survey of Havana’s history, the absence of footnotes or a more detailed bibliography leaves much to be desired.These criticisms should not detract from the successes of the book as an introductory primer to Havana’s history that should pique the interests of undergraduates or a popular readership. Cluster and Hernández provide a balanced account that largely avoids the traps of ideological fervor still too often associated with all things Cuban.

Teaching Baihua : Textbook Publishing and the Production of Vernacular Language and a New Literary Canon in Early Twentieth-Century China

Teaching Baihua: Textbook Publishing and the Production of Vernacular Language and a New Literary Canon in Early Twentieth-Century China Robert Culp (bio) It is hereby decided that starting in the fall of this year, all first- and second-year classes in lower primary schools (literally “citizens’ schools [國民學校 guomin xuexiao]”) should change first from using standard written Chinese (國文 guowen)1 to the written vernacular (語體文 yutiwen) in hopes of obtaining the results of integrating the spoken and written languages. —Ministry of Education decree, 12 January 19202 The Ministry of Education’s 1920 declarations calling for introduction of vernacular language textbooks at the primary level are often cited as a threshold moment in the movement for vernacular language.3 In fact, educators and publishers responded to [End Page 4] this decree with rapid publication of full sets of primary and secondary textbooks in a range of disciplines that used the syntax, styles, and lexicon of China’s emergent vernacular language. These textbooks, as we will see, contributed significantly to the spread and standardization of the written vernacular (白話 baihua). However, the project of creating and teaching China’s modern vernacular was more extended and decentralized than this state-centered account suggests, and textbooks played varied roles at different stages of this complex process. In this article I explore three distinct ways in which primary and secondary textbooks contributed to the production and spread of baihua. First, I build on the impressive existing literature on lexical change in the nineteenth century to establish that between 1900 and 1920—that is, during the twenty years before the Ministry of Education’s pronouncement on the language of textbooks—textbook publishing helped to consolidate the modern vernacular vocabulary. 4 Popular readers and content textbooks of the 1900s and 1910s introduced and defined many of the elements of the compound modern vocabulary of loan words and return loan words from Japanese and European languages that became fundamental elements of China’s modern vernacular. Second, I demonstrate that textbooks produced by the main commercial publishers during the 1920s and 1930s came to incorporate and spread to two generations of primary and secondary students New Culture forms of vernacular language. Because of the size of the national student body in comparison with other reading communities, incorporation of modern baihua into textbooks was a decisive step in making it a vernacular national language (國語 guoyu). New Culture movement-inspired baihua can be seen as a hybrid product that integrated late imperial styles of vernacular writing with ongoing lexical changes influenced by Europe and Japan and also stylistic and grammatical approaches based on both spoken language and European and Japanese models.5 During the 1920s and 1930s, when this language was still under construction, textbooks, which were variously written by publishers’ editorial staff, educators, and intellectuals, played a vital role in defining and disseminating baihua by providing large numbers of students with approved models of vernacular prose writing. In a preliminary effort to characterize these models, I differentiate between two registers of vernacular writing that textbooks offered students: colloquial baihua, which was based primarily on [End Page 5] conventions of everyday speech; and professionalized baihua, which followed highly Europeanized, academic patterns of vocabulary and style. Third, collection of vernacular fiction, poetry, and expository prose in secondary- level national language textbooks of the 1920s and 1930s contributed to marking certain authors and works as models of modern Chinese literature. As May Fourth intellectuals, such as Hu Shi (胡適 1891–1962) and Ye Shengtao (葉聖陶 1894–1988), drafted curricula or signed on with commercial publishers to compile vernacular language readers for secondary schools during the 1920s and 1930s, they included their own works and those of their colleagues. The result was that new literature advocates began to canonize those authors and works as representative examples of modern Chinese literature before or in step with the formal collection of May Fourth literature during the mid-1930s. Commercial textbook publishing thus provided a potent mechanism for proponents of the new literature to claim centrality and status for themselves and their works in ways similar to how literary scholar Michel Hockx describes different groups positioning themselves in the literary field through organization of societies and publication of journals.6...

Giving Pleasure Its Due: Collection Promotion and Readers’ Advisory in Academic Libraries

The National Endowment for the Arts’ 2007 report “To Read or Not to Read” discusses the distressing nationwide decline in reading. This report has generated considerable dialogue. The NEA’s data suggest that “frequency of reading for pleasure correlates strongly with academic achievement.” In a complex world, the ability to participate fully in societal decisions may be contingent on homing in on ideas in a way fostered by reading, and specifically by avid reading, reading for pleasure. The reading of books imparts skills that other media may not be able to grant. Academic librarians understandably focus on supporting their colleges’ pedagogical and research missions, only incidentally providing other resources, such as popular reading. However, fostering reading for pleasure both supports those pedagogical aims and moves beyond them. The university community needs these services more than ever, as the modes of electronic entertainment and communication employed by students fragment their attention ever further. Ludic reading is crucial, and promoting it remains essential to our profession. After a look back on 20th century academic library history, this article highlights ways academic librarians can encourage reading among users, including displays, instruction, programming, connecting with other libraries, expanding ideas of genre, and developing readers’ advisory skills.