Beyond the Book project: quantitative data and collateral documents

Quantitative data and collateral documents of the AHRC-funded project ‘Beyond the Book: Mass Reading Events and Contemporary Cultures of Reading in the UK, USA and Canada’, (2005-2008, grant number: 112166), a three-year interdisciplinary project. The study researched a selection of 21st-century reading events which employ mass media (TV and radio) and city-wide reading projects which employ the ‘One Book, One Community’ model.

The primary aims of the transnational study were to investigate how mass reading events configure contemporary practices of reading and the cultural meanings of reading at local, national and international levels; to explain the uses and complexities of reading communities in different locations; to identify and analyse trans-national trends and differences in contemporary reading cultures and reading practices; and, to critique the popular function of literary fiction.

The file contains the merged data collected from a series of 9 online surveys of readers in Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Chicago, Huntsville (Ala), Seattle, Vancouver, and across Canada and the UK. Convenience sampling was employed. The surveys were advertised through adverts in newspapers, on-line advertisements; flyers and bookmarks distributed through public library systems and cultural centres; via email through the research team’s formal and informal social and professional networks. The data includes reading choice, habits and practices; participation in broadcast and community book programming; and, basic demographic information (anonymised). The statistical data is deposited in .sav .csv and .por formats.

NB. The data from a pilot study conducted in Kitchener-Waterloo-Cambridge (Canada) in September-October 2004 (funded by the British Academy) does not form part of the deposited dataset but this material does inform the published results of the ‘Beyond the Book’ project.