Reading situations, cumulative effects of reading, and their consequences for surveying and promoting reading

Abstract

It can be considered as common sense that reading is important and that it has the potential to influence people’s life positively. This has also been evidenced by a large number of studies over the last years. Since the importance of reading is also one of the driving motivations behind the Creative Europe project Aldus Up as the network of European book fairs, the network with its research efforts wants to contribute to the objective to increase the number of, and improve studies on, reading behaviour in different European countries and, in particular, make them more comparable. This white paper is a brief presentation of different concepts of reading as well as a selection of important studies on the positive effects of reading for both individuals and society. Subsequently, it is proposed that the positive effects of different types of reading acts are presented cumulatively in an intuitive way with the help of graphically visualised constructs which we call ‘signatures’. These ‘signatures’ make it possible to manage types of reading acts for different purposes: if policy makers want to device targeted reading promotion measures, they have to specify and systematically know about the types of reading acts on which they focus. The same applies if publishers and other companies of the book industry work on product innovations that are intended to find readers. To support this is the exact purpose of the proposed ‘signatures’.