Reading Chicago Reading Who reads? What do they read? How do they read? These are questions essential to the study of literacy, yet fine-grained answers to these questions are difficult to come by, as noted in To Read or Not To Read, a 2007 report from the NEA. Our project Reading Chicago Reading represents a rare opportunity to seek empirical answers to these questions within a large metropolitan area, with a wide variety of texts, and across a great diversity of readers. Read more
Presentations at DHCS 2018 November 23, 2018November 23, 2018 jshanahan Leave a comment “Reading Chicago Reading” researchers presented on recent work at the 9th Chicago Colloquium on Digital Humanities and Computer Science, hosted by Loyola University Chicago. … Read more
Lyrasis Catalyst Fund Grant June 30, 2018October 25, 2018 jshanahan Leave a comment We are very happy to announce that Lyrasis will support the “Reading Chicago Reading” project through mid-2019! We will use the funding to develop a novel visualization dashboard for our data. Such an interactive dashboard should be of interest and use to other libraries, public and academic. The DePaul Library wrote a nice description of the award. The Lyrasis announcement is here.… Read more
Circulation Model Updated for 2016 Season June 10, 2018August 17, 2018 rburke Leave a comment Our multi-level model for One Book circulation has been updated to include data for the 2016 OBOC season, Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”. Interestingly, as a non-fiction work, the book proves to be very similar in its circulation pattern to two fictional works: “The Adventures of Augie March” and “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”. The second (tan) bars in each group below (marked AV) reflects the interaction between the AV circulation and three demographic components. Augie March is orange; Kavalier and Clay,… Read more
Planning the Reading of a City: CPL’s Jennifer Lizak May 31, 2018May 31, 2018 jshanahan Leave a comment Just before the most recent season ended on April 30, 2018, Mihaela Stoica of the “Reading Chicago Reading” project team sat down with Jennifer Lizak, Coordinator of Special Projects for Cultural and Civic Engagement at the Chicago Public Library to discuss the work that goes into planning, creating, and promoting events for the One Book One Chicago program. With only a few days of respite after the end of a successful 2017-18 program, and just before she started thinking about the upcoming season, Lizak gave us a glimpse of what goes on behind the curtain of this annual citywide program. Considering… Read more