Reading Experience Database

READING EXPERIENCE DATABASE 1450-1945
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/

The Reading Experience Database (RED) was launched in 1996 at the UK Open University. Its mission is to accumulate as much data as possible about the reading experiences of British subjects from 1450 to 1945 . For the purposes of the database, we define a 'reading experience' as a recorded engagement with a written or printed text - beyond the mere fact of possession.

Following a major three-year grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, RED is entering into a new phase of development, focusing on the period 1800-1945.

We aim, over the next three years, to build up a collection of more than 25,000 records of reading experience, and in order to do this, we would like to collect as many as possible of the reading experiences of British subjects and overseas visitors to Britain, whoever they were, and pretty much whatever they were reading. RED has no 'literary' bias. We are keen to gather evidence of all sorts of reading, not only books but also newspapers, journals, posters, advertisements, magazines, letters, scripts, playbills, tickets, chapbooks and almanacs. We include the compilation of scrapbooks, commonplace books, and autograph albums of the sort that include quotations and excerpts, and the experience of reading aloud or being read to. Over time, we believe this collected information will be weighty enough and significant enough to push the study of texts and reading in new directions. It will certainly enable the study of readership to progress beyond the anecdotal and speculative.

That said, we have had to keep our parameters manageable and exclude certain types of 'reading experience', not because we don't believe in their value, but because we feel a focussed resource is ultimately more useful. For the moment we do not include lists of books owned, professional public readings such as Dickens's; fictional depictions, illustrations or photographs of reading; the reading of music; theatre or cinema attendance; readings over the radio; or reader-response theories. We hope that related projects will some day collect the items we exclude, and in that case cross-referencing with RED will be a top priority.

On 27 June 2007, the RED database was launched (for further information, please visit RED launch). It is open access, and anyone is free to search the database or contribute entries of reading experience. Please follow the link to search the RED database.

RED NEEDS YOU!

RED will only ever be as good as the material that goes into it. And this is where the wider community of scholars and researchers comes in.. If, in the course of your own research, you come across a description of reading from any historical period between 1450 and 1945 (and this can be as cursory as, for example, finding a simple record of an identifiable reader having read a particular book or as extensive as finding a whole page of comments by an identifiable reader on the practice of reading, or a diary which records a person's thoughts on what they read every day), please make a note of it, and pass on that information to the RED research fellows, Katie Halsey: Katie.Halsey@sas.ac.uk or Rosalind Crone: R.H.Crone@open.ac.uk. Even better, fill in one of our forms yourself with the information. They are available on our website: http://reading.open.ac.uk:8282/part1.asp and there are guidelines: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/notes.htm for filling them in. If you would prefer hard copies, please contact Katie or Rosalind.

Anyone interested in working on a particular individual who lived in or visited Britain during the period 1450-1945 and who left letters, diaries, annotated books, autobiographies etc. which contain references to their reading of texts should also get in touch with us. RED is looking for volunteers to work their way systematically through such materials in order to record evidence of reading.

The project is a partnership between the Open University and the Institute of English Studies , School of Advanced Study , University of London . The project is directed by Professor Bob Owens of the Open University, and supervised by Dr Shafquat Towheed (The Open University). Other members of the RED Project Management team are Professor Simon Eliot ( Institute of English Studies , University of London ), Dr Mary Hammond ( Southampton University ), Dr Stephen Colclough ( University of Wales ) and Dr Alexis Weedon ( University of Luton ). There are two research fellows, Dr Katie Halsey ( Institute of English Studies , University of London) and Dr Rosalind Crone (The Open University).

For further information about RED, visit our website: http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/