Creating the world's largest single resource dedicated to the experience of reading
Researchers in The Open University Arts faculty have developed the world’s largest database about reading habits over the past 500 years.
The Reading Experience Database (RED) gathers evidence from across British history about the experiences of readers, famous and unknown – what they chose to read, where they read it and what they thought about it.
RED throws new light on aspects of our literature, history and culture. It is being used as a resource for research in a range of disciplines, and to support postgraduate teaching.
'Understanding how people read in the past is of considerable relevance to us today, when our own reading practices are changing rapidly.'It was funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council and developed by a team led by Dr Shafquat Towheed in the Faculty of Arts and draws on material from memoirs, correspondence, private diaries, marginalia in books, surveillance records in prison, and many other sources.
“Research emerging from RED has significantly deepened our understanding of the history of reading practices in the British Isles over five centuries,” says Shafquat Towheed.
“Understanding how people read in the past is of considerable relevance to us today, when our own reading practices and preferences are changing rapidly."
- Towheed, Shafquat (2011). Locating the reader, or what do we do with the man in the hat? Methodological perspectives and evidence from the United Kingdom Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (UK RED). Primerjalna knizevnost (Comparative Literature), 34(
- Towheed, Shafquat; Crone, Rosalind and Halsey, Katie (2010). Examining the evidence of reading: three examples from the Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945. In: Gunzenhauser, Bonnie ed. Reading in History: New Methodologies from the Anglo-American Trad