If you would like to find out a bit more about how people are researching ‘digital reading’ and the background to this project, please do check out the websites from our previous project Researching Readers Online and the Digital Reading Network. For example, the ‘Research Findings’ section of the Researching Readers Online site has the results of an online survey we conducted with users of online book forums, asking them about their reading and their reasons for going online to talk to other readers.
On the Digital Reading Network site, there are some really interesting blog posts (and comments) written by our members. For example ‘Sharing Reading in 140 Characters’ by Barbara Fister, a crime writer and academic librarian from the States, provides some fascinating insights into reading communities on Twitter. I can also recommend two great posts on the ‘Act of Reading’ – one by Sue Thomas that discusses where and how we do our reading, and a follow up to this by Andrew Prescott, who provides a very engaging account of his own personal reading history. Under ‘Events’ on this website you can also find videos of some of the discussion we held with local reading group members, writers and librarians.
Some other reading projects you might be interested in are Memories of Fiction, a study of how reading shapes our lives based on oral histories of reading, Reading Digital Fiction, which aims to introduce more readers to digital fiction, and Reading Communities: Past and Present a project based at the Open University looking at reading habits and practices from the past and their relevance to us today. Reading Sheffield is another invaluable resource on memories of reading, demonstrating how reading for pleasure can change people’s lives.
I hope you will enjoy reading and exploring these resources. If you would like to contribute something to the Blog for our new website, please get in touch, as we would love to hear from you.
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