The Afterlives of Shakespeare and Company in Online Social Readership

The growth of social reading platforms such as Goodreads and LibraryThing enables us to analyze reading activity at very large scale and in remarkable detail. But twenty-first century systems give us a perspective only on contemporary readers. Meanwhile, the digitization of the lending library records of Shakespeare and Company provides a window into the reading activity of an earlier, smaller community in interwar Paris. In this article, we explore the extent to which we can make comparisons between the Shakespeare and Company and Goodreads communities. By quantifying similarities and differences, we can identify patterns in how works have risen or fallen in popularity across these datasets. We can also measure differences in how works are received by measuring similarities and differences in co-reading patterns. Finally, by examining the complete networks of co-readership, we can observe changes in the overall structures of literary reception

Reading Matters in the Academic Library: Taking the Lead from Public Librarians

With the increasing virtualization of resources, reference service, and instruction, college students have fewer reasons to visit the academic library, a place they believe lacks relevance in their lives. This article explores the idea of revitalizing academic libraries by reconsidering the place of pleasure reading in them. Considerable research has been conducted on reading in the last quarter century. Reading serves a host of essential functions, far more than we have ever guessed. The first part of this paper looks at the social, psychological, moral, emotional, and cognitive role it plays in our lives. The second half examines readers’ advisory services that we can borrow or adapt from public libraries, services that can attract new users, promote lifelong reading, and transform academic libraries to be more community, user, and reader focused

Beyond traditional publishing models: An examination of the relationships between authors, readers, and publishers

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the state of contemporary publishing, specifically the realms of fanfiction and self-publishing, for the ways in which readership is represented in conjunction with authors and publishers within the publication process. The structure of this process is then compared with Robert Darnton’s communications circuit in order to propose a new model for the publication. As the publication process has a profound impact on the teaching and practice of collection development and reader studies in LIS, the discipline must be aware of any changes to the publication process. Design/methodology/approach – Using the case study approach, this research examines the cultural product, Fifty Shades of Grey (FSOG). Evidence included fanfiction and self-published manuscripts, reader reception of these texts, and a timeline of how the texts developed. Findings – Evidence gathered from the case study illustrate a variety of players and infrastructure present in the development and trajectory of FSOG. Throughout the entire development of the cultural product, readers were found to be active agents in the publication process promoting strong connections between reader and author. Findings focus on the themes of textual development and their publicity. Originality/value – Proposes a new model for the publication process that includes fanfiction and self-publishing

Readability levels and their impact on bestselling and award-winning fiction

Novels that make the bestseller list are often thought to have earned the position through good reading quality. It may come as a surprise for some that for a majority of bestselling novels, this is not the case. Generally, bestselling novels have a lower reading level, usually between the 7th and 8th grade. Why do some novels become adult bestsellers if they, judging by their reading level, are written for children? There is a limited amount of research available on readability in bestsellers, leaving the question of ‘what makes a bestseller?’ shrouded in mystery. In this dissertation I shine some light on one aspect of why some novels sell and others do not. This has been done by comparing the readability scores of three bestselling novels and three award-winning novels against their prospects of saleability, in the hope of determining if there is any correlation. Each novel’s reception by the public has been determined in part by analysing: Goodreads ratings, online reader reviews and interactions with the novel via social media. By comparing the public’s reception of each novel with each book’s reading level, correlations were drawn between a novel’s language level and its saleability. It was found that reading levels are not necessarily higher in award-winning literary fiction than in genre fiction, and while a correlation can be found between reading levels and online reader reviews, after taking the contextual issues of each novel into account, it was concluded that reading level has little to no effect on the percentage of ratings received on Goodreads nor the amount of interaction readers have with a novel’s marketing or promotional material. While reading levels provide insights into a book’s possible commercial success they are not able to provide a definite answer, prompting the need for more quantifiable research to be carried out in this subject area

Illusions of a ‘Bond’: Tagging Cultural Products across Online Platforms

Structured Abstract Purpose Most studies pertaining to social tagging focus on one platform or platform type, thus limiting the scope of their findings. This study explores social tagging practices across four platforms in relation to cultural products associated with the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming. Design/methodology/approach A layered and nested case study approach was used to analyze data from four online platforms: Goodreads, Last.fm, WordPress, and public library social discovery platforms. The top-level case study focuses on the book Casino Royale, by Ian Fleming, and its derivative products. The analysis of tagging practices in each of the four online platforms is nested within the top-level case study. ‘Casino Royale’ was conceptualized as a cultural product (the book), its derived products (e.g., movies, theme songs), as well as a keyword in blogs. A qualitative, inductive, and context-specific approach was chosen to identify commonalities in tagging practices across platforms whilst taking into account the uniqueness of each platform. Findings The four platforms comprise different communities of users, each platform with its own cultural norms and tagging practices. Traditional access points in the library catalogues focused on the subject, location, and fictitious characters of the book. User-generated content across the four platforms emphasized historical events and periods related to the book, and highlighted more subjective access points, such as recommendations, tone, mood, reaction, and reading experience. Revealing shifts occur in the tags between the original book and its cultural derivatives: Goodreads and library catalogues focus almost exclusively on the book, while Last.fm and WordPress make additional cross-references to a wider range of different cultural products, including books, movies, and music. The analyses also yield apparent similarities in certain platforms, such as recurring terms, phrasing and composite or multifaceted tags, as well as a strong presence of genre-related terms for the book and music. Originality/value The layered and nested case study approach presents a more comprehensive theoretical viewpoint and methodological framework by which to explore the study of user-generated metadata pertaining to a range of related cultural products across a variety of online platforms

Literary value in the era of big data. Operationalizing critical distance in professional and non-professional reviews

New phenomena such as digital social reading, instapoets, and the "rating culture" expressed in online reviews challenge traditional literary criticism in newspapers and journals. Millions of reviews on platforms such as Amazon or Goodreads are part of this culture of participation and a counterweight to professional criticism. At the same time, successful instapoets such as Rupi Kaur reject the expertise of the gatekeepers of "prestigious literary circles" and try to establish a direct connection with readers. The aim of this paper is to build the proper methodological framework to capture these changes in the current literary system. To do this, the phenomenon of online reviewing has to be contextualized within the history and the praxis of assigning literary value to literary texts, the so-called canonization. In addition, literary theory needs to be able to analyze quantitative data and to integrate numbers into its models (engaging in a procedure that is called operationalization)