Lit Review

Introduction

Interesting Background Information:

 “the amount of time people spend reading has almost tripled since 1980 (Kelly)
 “right now, ordinary citizens compose 1.5 million blog posts per day” (Kelly)
 “using their thumbs instead of pens, young people in college or at work around the world
collectively write 12 billion quips per day from their phone” (Kelly)
 “We are currently transitioning from reading mainly on paper to reading mainly on screens. As
we do so, most of us read MORE, in terms of quantity (word count), but more promiscuously
and in shorter intervals and with less dedication. As these habits take root, they corrupt our
willingness to commit to long texts, as found in books or essays. We will be less patient and less
able to concentrate on long-form texts. This will result in a resurgence of short-form texts and
story-telling, in ‘Haiku-culture’ replacing ‘book-culture.’” – Andreas Kluth, writer, Economist
magazine (http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Future-of-the-Internet-IV/Part-
2Reading.aspx)
 “People are doing more reading and writing now and that has to be better than the alternative.
The act of making media in the Web 2.0 world – and beyond – has to increase people’s
engagement with information and conveying it.”
(http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Future-of-the-Internet-IV/Part-2Reading.aspx)
o In other words, the future of reading is SOCIAL.

What is Social Reading?

 Definition:
o “Social reading is tied to this simple idea: people want to share what they’ve read.
Technology is the great enabler for this — from Flickr to YouTube, blogs to Facebook,
we’ve become a society that values sharing our collected thoughts and observations.”
(Johns)
 The point of books is to combat loneliness” (Johnson, S.)
 “that reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation”
(Shores)

What are the characteristics of Social Reading?

 Social reading extends the reader’s experience

 User added content is a crucial aspect of social reading
 Social reading leads to shared writing/thoughts
o Does sharing ideas lead to better ideas?
 one can make the case that the Enlightenment depended more on the exchange
of ideas than it did on solitary, deep-focus reading
  Social reading “[allows] journeys through worlds real and imagined, undertaken not along but in
company with other readers” (Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., 8)

Types of Social Reading

 The Traditional Book Club

o What is a traditional book club?
 Definition:
 A book club, also referred to as a reading group, is a collection of
readers who participate in the regular discussion of books. Traditionally,
a book club consists of several members who meet in person each
month to talk about a specific work. (http://www.book-clubs-
resource.com/book-club.php)
 Stats about Traditional Book Clubs (AuYeung, 1-2)
 Club members are almost exclusively female
 A large part of the members are over 65 and/or retired or stay-at-home-
moms
 Renewed Popularity
 Book clubs have “enjoyed renewed popularity with both adults and
adolescents due, in part, to the impact of popular media phenomena
like Oprah’s Book Club and the Harry Potter series” (Scharber, 433)
 Through media, these book movements encourage reading as social
engagement” (Scharber, 433)
o Why do people join traditional book clubs?
 “People join traditional book clubs for the social interaction” (AuYeung, 3)
 “The collective literary experience certainly has its benefits. Reading with a
group can feed your passion for a book, or help you understand it better. Social
reading may even persuade you that you liked something you thought you
didn’t.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/weekinreview/24rich.html?
_r=1)
 “Communal reading can also help for books that are challenging to approach on
your own. How many people actually got through “Ulysses” outside of a college
class?” (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/24/weekinreview/24rich.html?_r=1)
 You meet interesting people
 You read things that you wouldn't otherwise read.
 Some books need to be discussed
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/delia-lloyd/five-reasons-to-join-a-
bo_b_476162.html
 “Although that picture may resonate, the book club of the 21 st century is a far
cry from that quiet, isolated group of the past” (D’Andrea, 11)
 “People are looking for a chance to connect, and the library’s book club is a real
community” (Hoffert, 37).
  Key word: REAL (in person). Is the in person book club more personal?
More meaningful?
 The Online Book Club:
o What is an online book club?
 Definition:
 “Online book clubs offer several advantages over the traditional reading
group model. Due to the vastness of the web and the variety of book
clubs available, readers who turn to the Internet to find a book club
enjoy a much wider selection of clubs, including many dedicated to a
specialized interest or genre. In addition, online book clubs can be more
convenient, as many of them are available at any time of day.”
(http://www.book-clubs-resource.com/book-club.php)
o Statistics about Online Book Clubs
 75% of their respondents were between eighteen and fifty years of age—online
book clubs attract a younger audience (AuYeung, 4)
 Description of an ONLINE book club participant:
 “adult reader, primarily female, but also including men, twenty to forty
years old, Internet savvy, with at minimum a medium reading level”
(AuYeung, 7)
 Online book clubs may offer a motivating and convenient environment
to encourage voluntary book reading” (Scharber, 433)
o Why do people join Online Book Clubs?
 they join virtual book clubs for the book” (AuYeung, 3)
 “They preferred to read others’ messages and get reading suggestions without
commenting themselves. We learned from this that the majority of online book
club members might be looking for readers’ advisory rather than participatory
activities” (AuYeung,4 )
 Linking These are visitors who find a community by one means or
another. They may have bookmarked the site or added it to their RSS
reader. They are in a “testing” mode to determine if this community if
of interest to them and worth giving more of the time and attention.
 Lurking Often the largest segment of a community, these individuals
pay attention to the activity of the group and occasionally participate in
various activities. Wenger calls this group Legitimate Peripheral
Participants (LPP). They may be interested in greater involvement, but
either don’t feel worthy or don’t know how. For others the content may
only be peripheral to their work. 
o http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/the-art-
of-buil.html
o What are the Pros and Cons of Online Book Clubs? (AuYeung, 3):
 Pros:
  More time for in-depth analysis and discussion
 Less pressure to participate
 Less time investment (no travel)
 Participants are anonymous
 No meetings
 24/7
 Cons:
 Membership unpredictable
 Less immediacy
 Less social, emotional connection

 Social Media and Reading

o What is Social Media and Reading?
 “Social Networking…has taken reading and sharing literature to the masses,
catalyzing conversations and perspectives from eager readers who want to
share their thoughts to a broader world” (D’Andrea, 11)
 “Flash forward to today. Online discussion can be broken down into two
categories: using social networks to post updates, comments, or show
appreciation for a book, (or building conversations inside the book itself—this is
e-books).” (Johns)
 “This approach has tremendous value for word-of-mouth marketing, and
although most conversations are more sound-bites than discussion, they are
engaging and can be good fodder for conversations elsewhere.” (Johns)
o What are popular Social Media Reading Platforms?
 GoodReads
 Boasts more than 4,500,000 members who have added more than
120,000,000 books to their shelves
 “GoodReads members recommend books, compare what they are
reading, keep track of what they’ve read and would like to read, form
book clubs and much more”
 People are more likely to get excited about a book when their friend has
read it and can personally recommend it
o “One of the first newsletters I got was filled with information
about random people, what they have read, and what they are
talking about. To be honest, it just didn’t interest me” (Starr,
43)
 Social Reading is better when you know the person vs.
“know”
 “Knowledge is power; and power is best shared
among friends”
  “when I want to know what books to read, I’d
rather turn to a friend than any random person,
bestseller list or algorithm”
 Three main goals of GoodReads
o Get great book recommendations from people you know
o Keep track of what you’ve read and what you’d like to read
o Form a book club, answer book trivia, collect your favorite
quotes
o Dual mission of GoodReads: “to get people excited about
reading, and to help authors reach their target audience—
passionate readers” (LeCharles Gonzalez)
 Other characteristics of GoodReads
o Authors can upload and sell their eBooks online
o Combines social and business
o “convert social networking efforts into direct sales
o iPhone app allows readers to share their progress with their
friends
 Is this a form of accountability?
 Copia
 eBooks become weBooks
 Follow readers who share your tastes and join discussions about books
you love. Join in online or from the pages of an open eBook
 “When you write notes, highlight text and bookmark important pages,
your friends can follow along and respond back. This makes Copia the
only social platform that allows you to discuss your books while you
read”
 If a book is worth reading, it’s worth discussing. Copia is the place to do
both.”
 Browse and buy eBooks
 Get FREE eBooks
 Join a group
 Read on your desktop/iPad
 LibraryThing
 “Library Thing’s users have listed, tagged, or recommended more than
10 million works—a collection that, were it not virtual, would be the
third-largest private library in the United States behind those of Harvard
and Yale” (Schubert, 50)
 “Library Thing connects to 70 libraries around the world, allowing the
owners of some of the rarest books to accurately catalog and share
their collections” (Schubert, 50)
  You have to “pay $10 per year or $25 for life to enter more than 200
books
 Enter books by title, ISBN and enter your own tags about each book’s
subject matter
 Get recommendations for the bookshelves of other users whose tastes
are similar to yours” (Schubert 51)
 “LibraryThing is special because it offers three very strong features for
book lovers: a robust cataloging tool, a social element frequently
described as “MySpace for books” or “Facebook for books” (but better),
and book recommendations based on the collective intelligence of
member and institution collections.” (Starr, 26)
 “just because I wouldn’t list my own book collection, didn’t mean I
couldn’t see what other people collected that I might like” (Starr, 26)
 “The site analyzes more than 11 million books carrying more than 13
million tags” (Starr, 26)
 You can search the LOC on LibraryThing and 78 other libraries from
around the world including university library catalogs
 Social aspects of LibraryThing
o “When you view a book from Your Library, you can see the
various places to purchase it, editions ranked by popularity, and
user-provided cover images” (Starr, 27)
o “If you want to communicate with people who enjoyed the
book or have something to say about it, you can join online
discussions about the book by reviewing the available topics
and how many members have provided message there. You
can even swap a book through various third-party swap sites
linked form the page” (Starr, 28)
 E-books and Reading
o Explanation of E-books and reading:
 “Electronic books are beginning to demonstrate capabilities that challenge the
very definition of reading. Audiovisual, interactive, and social elements enhance
the informational content of books and magazines. Social tools extend the
reader’s experience into the larger world, connecting readers with one another
and enabling deeper, collaborative explorations of the text. The content of
electronic books and the social activities they enable, rather than the device
used to access them, are the key to their popularity” (Johnson, L., Smith, R.,
Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K., 8)
 Books were good at developing a contemplative mind. Screens encourage more
utilitarian thinking. A new idea or unfamiliar fact will provoke a reflex to do
something: to research the term, to query your screen “friends” for their
 opinions, to find alternative views, to create a bookmark, to interact with or
tweet the thing rather than simply contemplate it” (Kelly)
o What are the characteristics of e-Book Readers (justinthelibrarian)
 Sony Reader Touch Edition:
 Text on screen is beautiful
 Touch screen is not responsive
 Downloading books to the computer first and then to the eReader is a
pain
 Can download books from OverDrive
 Apple iPad:
 Easy to operate
 Fun to use
 Bookmarking and highlighting is easy
 iBook store has limited options
 No multitasking
 Cannot share or borrow books
 Can download books from OverDrive
 Amazon Kindle:
 Cannot download books from OverDrive
 eInk technology is awesome
 Looks and feels like a real book
 Lightweight, easy to hold
 Downloads books quickly
 Most “social” as it hooks up to twitter and Facebook
 Barnes and Noble Nook
 Two screen interface perfect for multitasking
 eInk
 Color
 Can download books from OverDrive
 Quite Slow
 Touch screen is clunky
o Ways in which the e-Reader device fits in perfectly with the concept of Library 2.0
(jlauren)
 User centered: minimal amount of time and effort to search and download a
book. Says “we understand your life is busy”
 Not just a trend: “enhancing the user experience means paying attention to
trends, evaluating their staying power and considering their usefulness toward
the library’s mission. It would seem that the e-reader is here to stay”
 Amazon sold more Kindle e-books than paperbacks for the first time ever
o How the Amazon Kindle encourages Social Reading:
  “Amazon wants the Kindle to be social in other ways, too. When people finish
reading a book, for instance, they will have the option to share it with friends or
rate it” (Cain Miller)
 “Kindle readers will soon be able to share their notes and highlights with other
and view popular highlights and note by people they follow” (Cain Miller)
 Amazon popular highlights—leaves dotted underlines under phrases in books
that multiple Kindle readers have highlighted (Johnson, S.)
 Nicholas Carr says that this “compulsive skimming, linking and
multitasking of our screen reading is undermining the deep, immersive
focus that has defined book culture for centuries” (Johnson, S.)
o Could popular highlights lead to social interaction away from
the screen?
 Amazon popular highlights takes the privacy out of reading (Codrescu)
o Underlined passages in a book “derail my private enjoyment”
(Codrescu)
o “Not only is the e-book not yours to be with alone, it is shared
at Amazon which shares with you what it knows about you
reading and the readings of others. And lets you know that you
are what you underline, which is only a number in a mass of
popular views” (Codrescu)
 “the Kindle e-book allows readers to highlight their favorite passages and if
enough people mark the same sentence, every Kindle user can see these so-
called popular highlights” (Codrescu)
 “I read almost 30 books on the Kindle! Some of them I picked out, but I also
read books that other people picked out” (Harland, et al., 58)
 “I make a connection to books based on the cover, spine, picture of the author,
colors, paper type, and fonts. The Kindle is so much less personalized than the
connection I make to regular books” (Harland, et. al., 59)
o Social Aspect of Public Notes—from Kindle Blog
 “This feature lets Kindle users choose to make their book notes and highlights
available for other to see. Any Kindle user-including authors, their fans, book
reviewers, professors and passionate readers everywhere—can opt-n to share
their thoughts on book passages and ideas with friends, family members,
colleagues, and the great Kindle community of people who love to read. This is
a new way for readers to share their excitement and knowledge about books
and get more from the books they read.” (Dilworth)
 “Another new social feature is called Before you Go…it kicks in when a user
finished an e-book on their Kindle, prompting them to rate it, but also share
their thoughts on the book with their social network. Recommendations for
other e-books to read will also be provided at this stage” (Dredge)
o THE MARGINALIA ARGUMENT
 “The author argued that you didn’t truly own a book (spiritually, intellectually)
until you had marked it up “(Anderson)
 That is called Marginalia—underlining memorable lines, writing keywords in
blank spaces, jotting important page numbers inside of back covers (Anderson)
 “Marginalia—spontaneous bursts of pure, private response to whatever
book happens to be in front of me It’s the most intimate, complete, and
honest form of criticism possible—not the big wide –angle aerial shot
you get from an official review essay, but a moment-by moment record
of what a book actually feels like to the actively reading brain”
(Anderson)
 “a way to not just passively read but to fully enter a text, to collaborate with it,
to mingle with an author on some kind of primary textual plane” (Anderson)
 “the golden age of marginalia lasted from roughly 1700 to 1820. The practice,
back then, was surprisingly social—people would mark up books for one
another as gifts, or give pointedly annotated novels to potential lovers.”
(Anderson)
 Marginalia was social
 Marginalia bridges the gap between a private and social activity
 “books are curious objects: their strength is to be both intensely private and
intensely socials—and marginalia is a natural bridge between these two states”
(Anderson)
 “in a world in which we’ll no long own books as discrete physical objects, the
only really meaningful thing we’ll own will be the reading experience itself”
(Anderson)
 “after all, isn’t reading supposed to be our great refuge from cultural noise”
(Anderson)?
 “in the world of e-books, marginalia would be purely value-added, appearing
and disappearing at the touch of a button” (Anderson)
 “what occurs on the margins can lend insight into the habits and attitudes (good
and bad, insightful and dull) of readers in a given historical time)” (Shores)
 “marginalia reveals a pattern of emotional reactions among everyday readers
that might otherwise be missed even by literary professionals” (Shores)
“but another, bigger part of the problem with Public Notes is that marginalia has
always been primarily a private form of communication, like a diary: a place for
readers to mark lines with a particular personal meaning or to jot notes to
themselves…to open it up for public consumption requires a rethinking of its
purpose” (Shores)
 “Books that we’ve known and handled often have a personal, physical
connection to the past that e-books won’t be able to capture” (Ng)
Personal Experience

 Anderson’s Book Club meeting

o After attending the meeting on April 21 th, I will write about my experience in a
traditional book club setting
 GoodReads Chic Lit Book Club
o After finishing the April book for the GoodReads book club I joined (Chick Lit) on the
22nd, I will write about my experience participating in an online book club
 GoodReads, LibraryThing, Copia, Shelfari
o In this section, I will write about my experience using various Social Media Reading
Platforms
 E-books and Reading
o After finishing the book Born Digital and April 22nd, I will write about my experience
reading a book via e-reader and sharing my thoughts via Kindle Public Notes/Twitter

The Future of Social Reading

 There are two major characteristics of social reading that will develop over the next five years.
o Content will become more dynamic and retrievable.
 Some random ideas for eBooks—video kevinrose
 Character information as you read throughout the book—stats page
about the character
 Friend annotations—highlight and leave a voice annotation on the
paragraph. Can check your friends’ annotations
 Lend a book—Send to a friend, lend it to them. Then you can see what
page they are going to
 Reading statistics page
 Integrating rich media—pull up Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos,
twitter feeds, etc
 Virtual book club—see where everyone is. When everyone finishes a
chapter, sends out a notification
o Distinguishing “Presence” will become important.
 “If you’ve ever checked into a physical bookstore on Foursquare, or Tweeted
that you’re attending a reading, you understand the rise of the real-time
component in interactivity. Developers call this “presence” – detecting where
someone is or what they’re saying in real time.”( Johns)

The final word: A vision for how the “book” of the future will serve us.

“Instead of reading and writing, let's say communication and content creation will be easier and
enhanced. I hope that the future of books is this: A regular size, regular weight hardcover will
contain not paper but epaper that any book can be embedded into, and the content can change at
my whim. I can move fluidly between professionally- produced audio and text with optional
hyperlinks that bring me to definitions, criticism, reviews, and discussion forums - i.e. I can read
to page 50, plug it into my car and listen to it for 10 pages, and pick up reading again on page 60
at my destination. Multimedia would be embedded - a novel might link to a character blog, a
reference book might include video, author bios would be a video. The “paper” will be a full
color touch screen…. My local library will loan me eBooks for free, that I can download without
ever setting foot into a library building. Anyone would be able become a content creator, because
of the ease of the publishing platform. And I would be able to seamlessly consume content in any
format on any platform.” – Beth Gallaway, library consultant and trainer