For most of us, reading is like breathing: we do it without even thinking about it. We live in such a text-laden environment that we encounter words wherever we look. It's easy, then, to think of such a taken-for-granted activity as natural. Of course we know what reading is—we do it all the time.
Perhaps it comes as a surprise, then, to discover that like any other human activity, reading has a history. Reading practices today—who reads what, how, why, and even when and where—are not the same as they were one thousand or even one hundred years ago. Did you know, for instance, that well into the Middle Ages, people usually read to themselves aloud rather than silently? Because most people heard writing rather than read it for themselves, words on the page were not separated by spaces or marked by punctuation, but ran together in continuous text. Text written this way is very difficult to read to yourself, but possible to read out loud. Did you know that although both girls and boys were taught to read in Colonial New England, generally only boys were taught to write, since writing was needed for business (a male activity), whereas everyone needed to know how to read the scriptures and the laws that governed their lives? In the nineteenth century some Americans were even systematically prevented from learning to read. Before the Civil War some southern states passed and enforced laws forbidding the enslaved from learning to read, imposing severe penalties. Current anxieties about young people's computer-based reading habits had their parallel in the late nineteenth century, when some people worried about a "public library habit of reading." By this they meant reading a lot and quickly, without giving oneself time to "digest" the text. In particular, many librarians and other cultural authorities were fearful of the reading of fiction, and tried to limit the number of novels borrowers could charge out of the public library. One public library director (William Kite of Germantown, Pennsylvania) even went so far as to ban all fiction from his library.
Why should reader's advisors be interested in the history of reading? There are many possible answers to this question, but I'll limit myself to three. First of all, if what we know is what we see around us, it's hard to imagine how things could be done otherwise—to envisage change. Knowing that reading practices were different in the past, and that even today they vary among groups and from place to place, encourages us to broaden our approach, to go beyond the standard reader's advisor's tools that are commonly marketed to public libraries and to seek out reading resources that are out of the mainstream. It also gives depth to our understanding of library patrons. Second, when concerns are expressed, as they often are, about the so-called decline in current reading standards, we can tell whether these concerns are justified because we have some idea of what we are comparing today's reading practices with. After all, it is easy to claim that things were better in the good old days, but do we really know what it was like in the good old days? And third, the history of reading is a fascinating topic that is being studied by more and more researchers. Reader's advisors owe it to themselves to find out more about this expanding field, and to develop their expertise in an area of activity that is at the heart of what libraries are about.
A number of disciplines are home to researchers working on the history of reading, including American studies, English, history, the history of science, sociology, journalism, and education, as well as library and information studies. With a few exceptions (for example Florida State University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Wisconsin) library schools do not offer courses in the history of reading, but some other resources are readily available. A good book to start with is Alberto Manguel's, A History of Reading (New York: Viking, 1996). Manguel covers many time periods and areas of the world in this broad-reaching and very readable account. The web page of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing, or SHARP, (http://www.sharpweb.org/) lists many organizations, exhibits, research, and teaching resources in the history of the book generally, which encompasses the history of reading. The International Reading Association also maintains a special interest group in the history of reading. You can find out more at http://www.historyliteracy.org/about.html. Finally, reader's advisors interested in finding out more about the history of their own specialty as well as other library services can go to the web page of ALA's Library History Round Table at http://www.ala.org/lhrt/.
With the growing popularity of electronic reading media (such as Amazon's Kindle) and electronic sources (such as Google Book and even cell-phone novels, popular in Japan), reading practices will continue to evolve. Audio books have already mushroomed in popularity; with new advances making downloads so easy and accessible, will "reading aloud" become the preferred format in the future? Will readers take to "interactive" books, where they can customize the story and interact with the author? Will readers go directly to author websites for downloads of their latest novels, rather than acquire books through publishers or libraries? To understand the impact of technological and other changes, we need to take a long view, and to set these newest developments in the context of a practice that is thousands of years old. The history of reading is an exciting field with room for participants with many different interests and level of involvement. I urge you to check it out!
References:
- Alberto Manguel, A History of Reading (New York: Viking, 1996).
- E. Jennifer Monaghan, Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2005).
- Janet Cornelius. "When I Can Read My Title Clear: Slave Accounts of the Literacy Process, 1830-1865." Phylon 44 no. 3, 1983 [171-186].
- William Kite. "Fiction in Public Libraries," Library Journal 1 no. 8 (1877), 277-78.
CHRISTINE PAWLEY is Professor in Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Director of the Center for the History of Print Culture in Modern America.