This lively, nuanced history of New York City's early public libraries traces their evolution within the political, social, and cultural worlds that supported them. On May 11, 1911, the New York ...Public Library opened its "marble palace for book lovers" on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. This was the city's first public library in the modern sense, a tax-supported, circulating collection free to every citizen. Since before the Revolution, however, New York's reading publics had access to a range of "public libraries" as the term was understood by contemporaries. In its most basic sense a public library in the eighteenth and most of the nineteenth centuries simply meant a shared collection of books that was available to the general public and promoted the public good. From the founding in 1754 of the New York Society Library up to 1911, public libraries took a variety of forms. Some of them were free, charitable institutions, while others required a membership or an annual subscription. Some, such as the Biblical Library of the American Bible Society, were highly specialized; others, like the Astor Library, developed extensive, inclusive collections. What all the public libraries of this period had in common, at least ostensibly, was the conviction that good books helped ensure a productive, virtuous, orderly republic-that good reading promoted the public good. Tom Glynn's vivid, deeply researched history of New York City's public libraries over the course of more than a century and a half illuminates how the public and private functions of reading changed over time and how shared collections of books could serve both public and private ends. Reading Publics examines how books and reading helped construct social identities and how print functioned within and across groups, including but not limited to socioeconomic classes. The author offers an accessible while scholarly exploration of how republican and liberal values, shifting understandings of "public" and "private," and the debate over fiction influenced the development and character of New York City's public libraries in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Reading Publics is an important contribution to the social and cultural history of New York City that firmly places the city's early public libraries within the history of reading and print culture in the United States.
By examining clerical book collections in Norway 1650-1750, this book describes the flow of books in one of the northernmost areas of Europe, a flow dependant on three networking areas in particular, ...namely Germany, the Netherlands and England.
Motivating Reading Comprehension Wigfield, Allan; Perencevich, Kathleen C; Guthrie, John T
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates,
1997, 20040520, 2004, 2004-00-00, 2004-05-20
eBook, Book
Concept Oriented Reading Instruction (CORI) is a unique, classroom-tested model of reading instruction that breaks new ground by explicitly showing how content knowledge, reading strategies, and ...motivational support all merge in successful reading instruction. A theoretical perspective (engagement in reading) frames the book and provides a backdrop for its linkage between hands-on science activities and reading comprehension. Currently funded by the Interagency Educational Research Initiative (IERI), this model has been extensively class tested and is receiving national attention that includes being featured on a PBS special on the teaching of reading.Key features of this outstanding new volume include:*Theoretical Focus--CORI's teaching framework revolves around the engagement perspective of reading: how engaged reading develops and the classroom contexts and motivational supports that promote it.*Content-Area Focus--Although science is the content area around which CORI has been developed, its basic framework is applicable to other content areas.*Focus on Strategy Instruction--CORI revolves around a specific set of reading strategies that the National Reading Panel (2000) found to be effective. In some current CORI classrooms collaborating teachers implement all aspects of CORI and in other classrooms teachers implement just the strategy instruction component. *Illustrative Vignettes and Cases--Throughout the book vignettes and mini-case studies convey a situated view of instructional practices for reading comprehension and engagement. A detailed case study of one teacher and of the reading progress of her students is featured in one chapter. This book is appropriate for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in education and psychology, for practicing teachers, and for researchers in reading comprehension and motivation.
The Middle East was one of the most literate civilizations during the high and late medieval period and home to bustling book markets, voluminous libraries and sophisticated book production. After ...the "paper revolution" of the ninth and tenth centuries, the number of books and the availability of the written word increased dramatically. In the scholarly world the written word played an increasingly prominent role and reading was taken up by wider sections of the population.
Birth of the symbol Struck, Peter T
2004., 20090209, 2009, 2004, c2004., 2004-01-01
eBook
Nearly all of us have studied poetry and been taught to look for the symbolic as well as literal meaning of the text. Is this the way the ancients saw poetry? In Birth of the Symbol, Peter Struck ...explores the ancient Greek literary critics and theorists who invented the idea of the poetic "symbol." The book notes that Aristotle and his followers did not discuss the use of poetic symbolism. Rather, a different group of Greek thinkers--the allegorists--were the first to develop the notion. Struck extensively revisits the work of the great allegorists, which has been underappreciated. He links their interest in symbolism to the importance of divination and magic in ancient times, and he demonstrates how important symbolism became when they thought about religion and philosophy. "They see the whole of great poetic language as deeply figurative," he writes, "with the potential always, even in the most mundane details, to be freighted with hidden messages."
The twofold purpose of this meta-analysis was to determine the relative importance of decoding skills to reading comprehension in reading development and to identify which reader characteristics and ...reading assessment characteristics contribute to differences in the decoding and reading comprehension correlation. A meta-analysis of 110 studies found a sizeable average corrected correlation (r̄c = .74). Two reader characteristics (age and listening comprehension level) were significant moderators of the relationship. Several assessment characteristics were significant moderators, particularly for young readers: the way that decoding was measured and, with respect to the reading comprehension assessment, text genre; whether or not help was provided with decoding; and whether or not the texts were read aloud. Age and measure of decoding were the strongest moderators. We discuss the implications of these findings for assessment and the diagnosis of reading difficulties.
Adolescents with reading disability (RD) participated in a randomized controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of a multiple-component reading intervention with motivational components (PHAST). A ...total of 514 youth in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade formed instructional groups (4-8) that were randomly assigned to one of three conditions-one of two PHAST interventions (additional comprehension or fluency training) or a remedial reading control condition. Intervention occurred in participants' schools, 40-60 min daily, 3-5×/week, for 100-125 hr total. Over four outcome assessments, multilevel growth models evaluated intervention/control differences in growth over time, and post-intervention effect sizes. The two PHAST interventions were associated with equivalent positive outcomes, and their data combined. PHAST participants out-performed Control participants on 8 of 16 outcomes, demonstrating greater growth on standardized and experimental reading and spelling outcomes. PHAST-instructed students demonstrated higher sense of reading competence, and increased attributions of reading success to their own abilities. Intervention effect sizes (Hedge's g) comparing PHAST versus Control growth were larger for foundational reading skills (.78 for nonword decoding, .56 for word identification) than for reading comprehension (.36 for passage comprehension), for which effects were more equivocal. An effect size of .61 was obtained for sense of reading competence. A year later, the PHAST participants demonstrated continued improvement on later-developing reading skills like word reading efficiency, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. Intensive reading intervention in middle school can produce gains on multiple dimensions of reading skill and motivation and foster continuing growth of higher-order reading skills.
Educational Impact and Implications Statement
Can reading intervention still make a positive impact for adolescents with persistent reading problems-those who failed to adequately respond to or never received early reading intervention? We developed and evaluated an intervention for middle school youth who were reading significantly below age and grade-level expectations and who met criteria for reading disability. We offered 100-125 hr of small group remedial intervention designed to address both the reading and the motivational problems of students with persistent reading disabilities in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. We compared the research-based PHAST Program with an equivalent amount of remedial reading instruction offered by Special Education teachers. These control group students made reading gains over the course of their intervention classes, but students in the PHAST intervention showed significantly greater improvement on standardized reading and spelling tests and on a self-report motivation measure of perceived reading competence. A year after their programs ended, PHAST students continued to improve on later-developing reading skills like word reading speed, reading fluency, and reading comprehension. These findings are encouraging because they demonstrate that multiple components of these older readers' reading systems still can be changed with intensive research-based intervention in the early years of adolescence.
In 1663, the Puritan missionary John Eliot, with the help of a Nipmuck convert whom the English called James Printer, produced the first Bible printed in North America. It was printed not in English ...but in Algonquian, making it one of the first books printed in a Native language. In this ambitious and multidisciplinary work, Phillip Round examines the relationship between Native Americans and printed books over a two-hundred-year period, uncovering the individual, communal, regional, and political contexts for Native peoples' use of the printed word. From the northeastern woodlands to the Great Plains, Round argues, alphabetic literacy and printed books mattered greatly in the emergent, transitional cultural formations of indigenous nations threatened by European imperialism.Removable Typeshowcases the varied ways that Native peoples produced and utilized printed texts over time, approaching them as both opportunity and threat. Surveying this rich history, Round addresses such issues as the role of white missionaries and Christian texts in the dissemination of print culture in Indian Country, the establishment of "national" publishing houses by tribes, the production and consumption of bilingual texts, the importance of copyright in establishing Native intellectual sovereignty (and the sometimes corrosive effects of reprinting thereon), and the significance of illustrations.
Background
Given the increasing popularity of reading from screens, it is not surprising that numerous studies have been conducted comparing reading from paper and electronic sources. The purpose of ...this systematic review and meta‐analysis is to consolidate the findings on reading performance, reading times and calibration of performance (metacognition) between reading text from paper compared to screens.
Methods
A systematic literature search of reports of studies comparing reading from paper and screens was conducted in seven databases. Additional studies were identified by contacting researchers who have published on the topic, by a backwards search of the references of found reports and by a snowball search of reports citing what was initially found. Only studies that were experiments with random assignment and with participants who had fundamental reading skills and disseminated between 2008 and 2018 were included. Twenty‐nine reports with 33 identified studies met inclusion criteria experimentally comparing reading performance (k = 33; n = 2,799), reading time (k = 14; n = 1,233) and/or calibration (k = 11; n = 698) from paper and screens.
Results
Based on random effects models, reading from screens had a negative effect on reading performance relative to paper (g = −.25). Based on moderator analyses, this may have been limited to expository texts (g = −.32) as there was no difference with narrative texts (g = −.04). The findings were similar when analysing literal and inferential reading performance separately (g = −.33 and g = −.26, respectively). No reliable differences were found for reading time (g = .08). Readers had better calibrated (more accurate) judgement of their performance from paper compared to screens (g = .20).
Conclusions
Readers may be more efficient and aware of their performance when reading from paper compared to screens.
Highlights
What is already known about this topic
Reading from screens is common.
Many concerns exist about effects of medium on reading.
Numerous studies on the topic have been conducted.
What this paper adds
Small benefit of paper on reading performance.
No difference in reading times.
Small benefit of paper on metacognition.
Implications for theory, policy or practice
Reading from paper may be more efficient.
Better understanding of why paper has reading benefits is needed.
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