Learning From Leisure Reading: A Study of Adult Public Library Patrons

While educational outcomes are one of the many factors that influence leisure reading, these outcomes were important enough to the respondents to warrant consideration by readers’ advisors. With educational outcomes most often serving a secondary role in the leisure reading experience, readers may not be able to tell staff about the importance of educational outcomes for their reading, but it is still a factor that needs to be taken into account. One way in which this could be integrated into RA work would be to use the survey instrument or even some of the items on it to get readers to start talking about the importance of educational outcomes and the specific types of educational outcomes that matter to them. For example, one interviewee said that she never liked to read contemporary fiction because she did not like reading about other people’s problems; she worked at United Way and it was too much like her daily life. However, she did really like to read books about Africa and books that were set in Africa, because it is a part of the world that she was interested in and liked to learn more about. This could be revealed by asking the reader about item 12 or item 14. Another subject liked to read books that were about people that had survived abuse or illness because these were experiences that she and friends of hers had also had. She liked to learn more about these experiences so she could better relate to and understand herself, her friends, and her family. This information could be gathered by asking readers about items 4 or 8.³⁶ As has been said many times before, the more that librarians can talk with patrons about what they like, the better they can suggest reading materials. Both the survey items and the four categories of educational outcomes should be helpful for readers’ advisors as they attempt to understand the role that educational outcomes play in each reader’s leisure reading experience.

While the suggestions above would work best for one-on-one RA transactions, the importance of educational outcomes also could be taken into account for other types of RA situations. Staff conducting book talks or writing reviews could highlight some of the educational outcomes in specific books. New read-alike lists could be created based on different outcomes. A list about other countries and cultures could range from some of the more traditional historical fiction, to modern works such as those by Amy Tan or Alexander McCall Smith, or romances set in exotic locations. Most importantly, librarians need to remember that the more they can talk to their readers and learn about them, the better they can suggest titles. Hopefully this research on educational outcomes will open up a new avenue for discussion between readers and advisors.

As with any research project, this one generated many possible areas for future research. Areas that would be especially important to conduct follow-up research in would be the relationship between leisure reading and the consumption of other popular media. All of the interview subjects emphasized their distaste for most TV programs. A few watched educational programs (the History Channel and A&E were both mentioned), and a few listened to National Public Radio. Newspaper reading was not done regularly by all respondents; it would be interesting to study the relationship between leisure book reading and other types of reading, especially as the reading of Internet sites such as Salon.com or any of the many blogs, increases in popularity.

The other interesting result that came out of the interview process (which deserves further study) is the connection between reading and visiting the library as a child and being a leisure reader as an adult. It would be especially interesting to look at leisure readers who did not identify themselves as library users, such as romance readers who only get their books from grocery stores or by mail order. It would be wonderful to see this research done as a collaboration of youth services librarians, young adult librarians, and adult librarians to look at library use and leisure reading over time. One interesting aspect of this particular type of research would be to look at the way leisure reading is valued socially at different stages in subjects’ lives. Is leisure reading as highly valued and promoted for adults as for children? When and why does it change? How does that influence an adult’s decisions to read as a leisure time activity?

Finally, more study is needed on the categories of educational outcomes that were developed from this research. Since this sample was by necessity small and geographically limited, it would be worthwhile to repeat the survey and interview process with a wider variety of libraries and patrons, possibly even studying readers who do not frequent libraries, although these readers could be difficult to identify. With the creation and addition of some survey items, the survey could be repeated easily in a number of libraries to see if the educational outcome categories identified by the subjects were also those that mattered to readers in other libraries. With these results it would be easier to generalize results to all leisure readers, and increase our knowledge and understanding of leisure readers and adult public library patrons.

Acknowledgments: The author would like to acknowledgement the assistance of Mary Wilkes Towner, Linda Smith, and Terry Weech for valuable comments and feedback, as well as guidance in the development of this project. The author also would like to thank Christopher Moyer for his assistance with the statistical analyses.

Jessica E. Moyer is Reference and Instruction Librarian, Milne Library, State University of New York College at Oneonta. A summary of the research was presented at the 2005 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago at the Library Research Roundtable’s 4 Star Research Forum on June 26, 2005. This research was also submitted as the written report for a Certificate in Advanced Studies Project, in partial fulfillment of the degree of Certificate of Advanced Studies, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, December 6, 2004.

Submitted for review July 21, 2005 and accepted for publication February 9, 2006.

References and Notes

1. Catherine Sheldrick Ross, “Finding without Seeking: What Readers Say about the Role of Pleasure Reading as a Source of Information,” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 13, no. 2 (June 2000): 72-80.
2. An excellent summation of her research can be found in The Readers’ Advisor’s Companion: Catherine Sheldrick Ross, “What We Know from Readers about the Experience of Reading,” in The Readers’ Advisor’s Companion, ed. Kenneth Shearer and Robert Burgin, (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2001), 77-96.
3. Lianghzu Yu and Anne O’Brien, “Domain of Adult Fiction Librarianship,” in Advances in Librarianship, vol. 20, ed. I. Godden (San Diego: Academic, 1996), 151-90.
4. Jessica E. Moyer, “Adult Fiction Reading: A Literature Review of Readers’ Advisory Services, Adult Fiction Librarianship, and Fiction Readers,” Reference & User Services Quarterly 44, no. 2 (Spring 2005): 38-47.
5. Kenneth Shearer, ed., Guiding the Reader to the Next Book (New York: Neal-Schuman, 1996); Kenneth D. Shearer and Robert Burgin, eds., The Readers’ Advisor’s Companion (Englewood, Colo.: Libraries Unlimited, 2001).
6. Shearer and Burgin, The Readers’ Advisor’s Companion, 77-96.
7. Juris Dilevko and Lisa Gottlieb, Reading and the Reference Librarian: The Importance to Library Service of Staff Reading Habits (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2004).
8. Mary Wilkes Towner, e-mail to author, Nov. 11, 2004; Kristina Daily, e-mail to author, Oct. 28, 2004; Nov. 1, 2004.
9. Anne K. May, Elizabeth Olesh, and Anne Miltenburg, “A Look at Readers’ Advisory Services,” Library Journal 125, no. 15 (Sept. 15, 2000): 40-43.
10. Donald O. Case, Looking for Information: A Survey of Research on Information Seeking, Needs, and Behavior (San Diego: Academic, 2002), 143-46.
11. Kirsty Williamson, “Discovered by Chance: The Role of Incidental Information Acquisition in an Ecological Model of Information Use,” Library and Information Science Research 20, no. 1 (1998): 23-40.
12. Case references Williamson on pages 84, 146, 153, 258, 269, 273, 278, and 333, and Ross on pages 105-6, 153, 327.
13. Williamson, “Discovered by Chance,” 24.
14. Ross, “Finding without Seeking,” 72.
15. Case, Looking for Information, 143-44.
16. Ibid., 84-88; Case on Williamson, 272-73.
17. Case, Looking for Information, 152.
18. Stephen D. Weil and Peggy D. Rudd, Perspectives on Outcome Based Evaluation for Libraries and Museums (Washington, D.C.: IMLS). www.imls.gov/pubs/pdf/pubobe.pdf (accessed Oct. 28, 2004).
19. Ibid., 16-23.
20. For outcomes in academic libraries see: Anna H. Perrault, Vicki L. Gregory, and James O. Carey, “The Integration of Student Learning Outcomes with Teaching Effectiveness,” Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 43, no. 4 (Fall 2002): 270-82; Ethelene Whitmire, “Academic Library Performance Measures and Undergraduates’ Library Use and Educational Outcomes,” Library and Information Science Research 24, no. 2 (2002): 107-28; See also vol. 28, issues 1/2 (2002) of the Journal of Academic Librarianship, which focuses on outcome measures. The Oct./Dec. 2003, no. 230/231, issue of ARL also focuses on outcome measures. Library Trends has published an outcomes issue (Winter 2003), which includes one of the better articles addressing outcomes use in public libraries: Glen E. Holt and Donald Elliot, “Measuring Outcomes: Applying Cost-Benefit-Analysis to Middle-sized and Smaller Public Libraries,” Library Trends 51, no. 3 (Winter 2003): 424-40.
21. Thomas J. Hennen Jr., “Hennen’s American Public Library Ratings.” www.haplr-index.com (accessed Oct. 28, 2004).
22. See appendix for the survey.
23. Stephen D. Brown and Robert W. Lent, eds, Handbook of Counseling Psychology, 3d ed. (New York: Wiley, 2000), 161-65.
24. Ibid., 165.
25. All data are reported as whole numbers and due to rounding, not all tables will add up to 100 percent.
26. Roderick P. McDonald, Test Theory: A Unified Treatment (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999).
27. Ibid., 89-90.
28. See appendix for a complete listing of the survey items or table 1 for a listing of survey items and results from the factor analysis.
29. See table 2 for survey results by genre. Values of 1 and 2 were coded as well liked, 3 as neutral, and 4 and 5 as disliked, to correspond to the survey instrument, with 1 = I love it, 2 = I like it, 3 = It’s okay, 4 = I’d rather not read it and 5 = I hate it.
30. Mostly anecdotal, though Ross cites several studies about genders of readers, “Finding without Seeking,” 72-73. While this type of national demographic study is common in Europe, it is rarely done in the United States as seen in Ross’s citations, which have the most recent United States survey from 1983.
31. Categories were developed by author.
32. Ross, “Finding without Seeking,” 73.
33. Several of the subjects were asked: “Tell me a little bit about yourself as a reader; what it means to you, what role reading plays in your life, when you read, how often?” This was used as an introductory question in six of the seven interviews.
34. Ross, “Finding without Seeking,” 76-79.
35. Ibid., 77.
36. For text of each item see table 1 or appendix.

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