a global reading experience...
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Welcome to RED, the Reading Experience Database…
Reading is not confined by national borders: readers travel, and books circulate internationally. But how can we trace the evidence of reading across borders? Are authors famous in one country equally admired by readers elsewhere? RED aims to answer some of these questions.
RED is a collection of databases currently under development whose aim is to accumulate as much evidence as possible about reading experiences across the world. When all the project databases are completed, the search and browse facilities will enable you to chart the reading tastes of individual readers as they travel to other countries, and consider how different environments may have influence their reading habits. You will be able to track the readership of books issued in new editions for new audiences in different countries. Comparative search results will be displayed interactively and linked to relevant records in the different national REDs.
Each national RED will offer a range of services to users, including profiles of readers, authors, and titles; tutorials on accessing and analysing evidence; and examples of how scholars use the database to uncover patterns of reading. To visit individual national REDs, click on the logos on the left. Bear in mind that this is an ongoing project, and that the national projects are at different stages of development. Not all facilities may be available at present. UK RED is the most advanced, offering database browsing, searching, contribution facilities, pedagogical tools and a wiki.
RED is a new resource officially launched at the end of February 2011. Most of the nations represented by the logos on the left are in the process of collecting data at this time and it may take a while before this data is online and searchable. In the near future, the RED search function will allow you to interrogate all the cumulative data in the different REDs swiftly and productively. Until that time, thank you for your patience and interest.
Books without Borders...
Australia - John Cawte wrote that it was in the years before 1951 that he 'had first encountered hallucinations in Shakespeare, who seemed acutely aware of them, in forms of vision and smell as well as hearing. At school I had memorized those of Lady Macbeth, expressed in language that few altogether forget, once they hear it.'
