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This article presents information on the prospects of the paper books industry. According to a report, with the arrival of the first eReaders in the publishing market, it accounted for about 20% of the U.S. book market and 12.9% in Great Britain. The author states that eBooks are revolutionising reading habits.

Purpose -- This paper aims to contribute to discussion about the changing role of libraries and their collections, through discussing projects designed by architecture students. Design/methodology/approach -- The paper reflects on design projects produced by final-year students studying for an undergraduate degree in architecture. A project was set for a group of students to design a "Book Repository". Each researched their own interpretation of what this might be, given contemporary issues such as increasing digitisation, falling numbers of library visitors, changing users' needs and what they interpret as a future for books. This paper reviews a selection of the projects in the context of contemporary research, and discusses the book as a physical object, contemporary library design and the role of libraries as civic buildings. Findings -- Despite being designed by digitally literate students, physical books are highly significant in every project; however, the cultural significance of the books is more important than the objects themselves. Also, the provision of spaces for the act of reading is notably absent. The relationship between the library and its context was a key theme for several projects, which explore innovative means through which to engage the public. Originality/value -- Collectively these projects contribute to debate over the role of books and libraries in contemporary culture through the eyes of young designers. The paper will be of interest to those involved in the procurement and design of libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Second World War, the British book trade faced severe shortages of paper, of labour, particularly in the printing and binding sectors, and of shipping space for imports of raw materials and exports of finished books. These limitations drastically reduced the number of books publishers produced—supplies to British booksellers were strictly rationed and exports dwindled to a mere fraction of their pre-war levels. American publications, less affected by war-time shortages, began to supplant British exports in certain key markets. Concern intensified in Britain that this trend would continue, seriously and permanently damaging the book export trade. Overseas book sales were particularly valued, not only because of their very real contribution to the balance of trade, but also because of their immeasurable contributions to the promotion of British culture and ideas around the world: ‘Books are ambassadors of British culture… Books are salesmen of British goods.’1 Prompted by the desire to reclaim markets neglected during the war, drawn by the lure of new markets emerging after, and constantly motivated by the treat of competition from America, the British book trade waged a great campaign to increase book exports. Individual publishers, trade organizations, government ministries and charitable organizations all cooperated in this export drive, introducing an astonishing number of new initiatives and projects between 1940 and 1960. This paper charts traces the motivations behind the book export drive and describes the major initiatives it prompted. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Originally published in 1904, Whittaker's A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies soon became a classic of the subject and has remained in print for most of these 108 years. In this paper, we follow the book as it develops from a report that Whittaker wrote for the British Society for the Advancement of Science to its influence on Dirac's version of quantum mechanics in the 1920s and beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The titles reviewed in this section of Ibis are available for reference at the Alexander Library of the Edward Grey Institute of Field Ornithology, Department of Zoology, South Parks Road, Oxford, UK. The library is open to BOU members, Monday to Friday (09:00–17:00 h). Please write or telephone (+44 (0)1865 271143) prior to your visit to ensure the library is open. The aim of the Alexander Library is to build up a comprehensive collection of literature as a service to ornithologists. Its holdings include an extensive range of periodicals and a large number of reprints drawn from many sources: additional reprints of readers’ papers are always welcome. The library has always greatly benefited from its close relationship with the BOU. For a number of years, all journals received in exchange for Ibis have been deposited in the library, and through the generosity of reviewers, most of the books sent for review. In return, as a service to readers, this review section of Ibis is organized and edited by Michael G. Wilson and Professor Ben Sheldon of the Edward Grey Institute, with the help of a panel of contributors. They are always grateful for offers of further assistance with reviewing, especially with foreign language titles. Part of the cost of this book review section has been subsidized by Subbuteo Natural History Books. Subbuteo are an international mail-order book company stocking over 2000 titles covering all natural and environmental sciences. They can also source titles from around the world. Titles reviewed here can be ordered from Subbuteo and payment can be accepted by credit card or cheques in £/$. Postage, packing and insurance is £1.99 per order. International postage is charged at cost; please contact them for a quote. To order a book or to request the full catalogue please contact: Subbuteo Natural History Books Ref. 0252, The Rea, Upton Magna, Shrewsbury SY4 4UR, UK. Tel: 0870 010 9700 Fax: 0870 010 9699. Email: Website: [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the history, membership, and rules of the Heath Book Club operating near Wakefield, Yorkshire, in the 1850s in order to gain insight into the lives of readers during the Victorian period. Members included several wealthy landowners, clergymen, and other prominent residents, as well as a few professionals and one tradesman. As members of a book club, readers had access to otherwise hard-to-attain books. As a social network, the book club may have provided additional economic, social, or political returns to the members. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about the book "Co-operatives Markets: Co-operative Principles." The book contains eight papers that analyze recent changes in the performance of cooperatives, the evolution of legislation regulating their activities and the impact of change on the fundamental values and principles of the cooperative movement in different European countries. The papers examine developments in Austria, Belgium, France, Italy, Quebec, Spain, Sweden and Great Britain.

Twopenny libraries first appeared in North London in 1930 and quickly spread throughout urban Britain. Their innovation was to dispense with subscription fees and charge per loan. Unlike older commercial libraries such as Mudie’s, twopenny libraries served a working-class clientele. Some twopenny libraries were standalone businesses. Many more were sidelines to existing businesses such as tobacconists’ and newsagents’ shops. Library services could be profitable in their own right, but often their main value to their proprietors was to bring customers into the shop more regularly. Established players in the book trade initially responded to twopenny libraries with alarm, but the threat they posed was limited. Their market was not the same as those of booksellers. Some public librarians made arguments along these lines about the twopenny libraries’ impact on public libraries; certainly, the two types of institution coexisted. Twopenny libraries carried a lot of so-called light fiction, but they also lent working-class readers the ‘middlebrow’ bestsellers of the 1920s and 1930s. The wider significance of the twopenny library lies in the way it problematizes the distinction commonly made between a middle-class public for new hardcover novels and a working-class readership of fiction that appeared in cheap papers and magazines. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the late nineteenth century several projects for the publication of county and regional history have envisaged a series with complete national coverage (referring here to England only). They have met with varying degrees of success, both in terms of completeness and of quality. Their inspiration has been variously academic or commercial, sometimes ambitiously seeking to satisfy both aspirations, and they have been aimed at different markets. This paper reviews these various series insofar as they have concerned the seven northern counties, seeking to assess their value and to consider both contemporary responses and retrospective appraisals of their merits and defects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comics and education is usually synonymous with low literacy levels, reluctant readers and a predominantly male audience. Through an ethnographic study of an extra-curricular Graphic Novel Reading Group set up in a secondary school, this paper questions such assumptions and discusses some of the complex issues around the place that comic book reading occupies amongst adolescent readers in educational institutions. It demonstrates the sophistication of their readings of comics through the value placed on form (Groensteen) but acknowledges that it is the marginal cultural position (Pustz) that comics still occupy in Britain which also constitutes much of their value for these teenage readers. The place of comic book reading in schools is thus problematized when one considers actual, as well as implied, readers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper we introduce a comprehensive database of the vocabulary in reading materials used by 5 - 9 year old children in the UK. The database is available on-line http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/cpwd and allows researchers into early reading development the possibility of rigorous control over critical characteristics of experimental stimuli such as word frequency, regularity and length, frequency of grapheme-phoneme correspondences, orthographic and phonological neighbourhoods etc. The on-line database is also a resource that can be used by practitioners with interests in literacy development and literacy instruction. It can be used to obtain characteristics for a user-generated list of words, or else to generate a list of words according to constraints specified by the user. Here we present an overview of the construction of the database, the materials entered into it, the survey of schools by which we obtained information about the books that were most likely to be used by children in each age group, and the search features available on the database website. We also discuss certain characteristics of the Vocabulary itself and compare these with those reported in an earlier non-representative database reported in Stuart, Dixon, Masterson and Gray (2003).We then present a detailed analysis of the characteristics of Vocabulary in books used in the Reception year, against the background of recent recommendations for change in the early teaching of reading. Finally, we present data showing that the database is indeed already proving a useful resource for both practitioners and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The received wisdom is that men do not read as much as women. If it is true, how can libraries use sport to engage men and the men of the future -- boys -- to read more. If it is not true, how can we redefine respectable reading to include sport biographies, the back pages and the internet, so that men and boys see themselves as avid readers? Edited version of a paper presented at the Reading Critical conference, State Library of Victoria 11-12 April 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bibliotherapy activity in Essex is described and the development of bibliotherapy in the UK reviewed, drawing on an audit prepared for Arts Council England and the Museums, Libraries, and Archives Council in 2006. There is a focus on book prescription but also covered is the use of creative literature to promote health and wellbeing, and the filtering of information on prescription by some UK library services. Edited version of a paper presented at the Reading Critical conference, State Library of Victoria 11-12 April 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent advances have been made in promoting reading to young people between the ages of 16 and 18 by UK public libraries, but there is a need for similar reader development initiatives in educational libraries This paper provides a review of recent literature on reader development activities for this age group. It then reports on a questionnaire survey completed by 118 young people in a Further Education college library in North West England. The results show student usage and opinions of the fiction collection, attitudes to reading for pleasure and genre preferences. Non-use may stem from limited time available given the extent of student employment in addition to their studies, a lack of awareness of the availability of fiction from the college library and lack of interest in reading outside of their studies. Areas for improvement and further research are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information about the book "The Multinational Traders," edited by Geoffrey Jones. The book presents eleven papers, presented and discussed at a conference held at the Centre for International Business History at the University of Reading in September 1997, that consider the evolution and theory of multinational trading companies, focusing on the twentieth century. The papers discuss the economic analysis of multinational trading companies (Mark Casson); the evolution of Mackinnon Mackenzie & Co. within the Mackinnon Enterprise Network from regional trade to global shipping (J. Forbes Munro); the German metal traders before 1914 (Susan Becker); Dutch multinational trading companies in the twentieth century (Keetie E. Sluyterman); Great Britain's trading companies in South America after 1914 (Robert Greenhill and Rory Miller); trading companies in twentieth-century Sweden (Hans de Geer); the development of Swiss trading companies in the twentieth century (Sebastien Guex); French trading companies in sub-Saharan Africa, 1960-90.

ABSTRACT This paper argues that three specific areas of influence contribute to shaping the attitudes and expectations of adolescent reading in Britain: that of the family, that of the friendship group and that of the peer group in school. I examine pupils' perceptions of themselves as readers, and the ways in which their early reading experiences have been differentiated in relation to their gender. I provide evidence that reading is constructed within both domestic and school settings as an interest more appropriate for adolescent girls than it is for boys, and examine ways in which their reading experience has been influenced by other members of the family and the wider community. Finally I identify the role of the school curriculum in promoting particular versions of literacy that have more appeal for girls than boys in the survey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term grammar is elastic and flexible, a result of changing conventions in the grammatical tradition since the time of Greek philosophers and of the variety of senses that the term can convey. This paper will explore two sources of evidence that serve to shed light on the understanding of grammar in the eighteenth century, namely the divisions into primary constituents (orthography, orthoëpy, etymology, syntax and prosody) and the subsidiary content that accompanies the main parts of grammar (e.g. punctuation, lists of irregular verbs, figurative syntax). It will be shown that there is a great deal of uniformity and consistency in the enumeration of the primary parts of grammar, but also a rich variety of patterns and a richer overall variety in secondary material. Building on Ian Michael's work on the English grammatical tradition, and using data from the Eighteenth-Century English Grammars database, this study will contribute to recent work in linguistic grammaticology by providing insights into what eighteenth-century writers considered essential for a good knowledge of grammar, at a time when proper and correct knowledge of English was a key instrument for social advancement, and a time when the growing literacy and readership revolutionised the print culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This editorial discusses about the holidays of December month. It is quoted, in Great Britain there are longer holidays of Christmas and New Year in the year 1993. Due to this, reader might get a little more reading time this month than usual. This edition includes one or two papers and letters a little out of usual field.

‘What do the masses read?’ After popular literacy and an urban market for mass culture became conspicuous in Britain in the middle of the nineteenth century, dozens of literary figures and social researchers took it upon themselves to answer this question. Middle-class inquirers sought in newsagents' wares a vicarious connection with the culture and values of the readers of popular fiction. Many of these investigators, from Wilkie Collins in the 1850s to George Orwell in the 1930s, practised a form of literary criticism that doubled as social criticism. Other students of popular reading – Florence Bell in her study of early twentieth-century Middlesbrough and Mass-Observation in its surveys of reading during the Second World War – worked at the margins of British traditions of social research. Critics working from the texts of popular fiction tended to concentrate on questions of style and ideology; those doing fieldwork focused on reading as a social practice. Examining the corpus of studies of popular literacy from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century opens up the question of the scope of literary criticism and social research in modern Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Present a list of book received by the editorial staff of the British journal “The Sociological Review,” as of publication of the July 1968 issue. “Studies in Sociology,” edited by M. C. Albrecht; “Magazines Teenagers Read,” by C. Alderson.

A report of a Margery C Ramsey Scholarship study tour of reader development in UK public libraries. It is concluded that reading has a much higher profile in the UK than in Australia, and that it is time for Australian public libraries to strengthen their focus on reader development and their core business of books and reading. Edited version of a paper first published in Public library journal October 2006 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers two practice developments in Welsh (UK) youth justice: desistance-informed practice and the trauma recovery model (as applied in an intervention known as enhanced case management). The potential complementarity of these two approaches to working with trauma-experienced young people in the criminal justice system is explored with reference to the theoretical literature and an evaluation of enhanced case management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the British periodical entitled "Critical Review," edited by Tobias Smollet, published between 1756 and 1845. It is compared to the similar "Monthly Review" which was created earlier, as both journals were created to serve a growing reading public by offering reviews of literature but differed in their editorial policies, with Smollet relied on a "set of gentlemen" as reviewers.

Sitting down to read a work of fiction was a well-established leisure activity within British society by the early-twentieth century but one that was mainly enjoyed by the country's more leisured classes. After the First World War, however, changes to the publishing industry's working practices, coupled with the growth of the "open access" system in public libraries in the 1920s and the spread of twopenny libraries in the 1930s, created a new type of reader, drawn principally from the country's working-class communities. This article reveals that the spread of the working-class book-reading habit prompted a series of discussions among the country's cultural elites, publishers, and public and commercial librarians regarding how that social group engaged with the written word. Many of these commentators were highly disparaging of the working classes' reading and book-borrowing habits and, based on a prejudiced understanding of that social group's cultural capital, sought to influence the types of reading material available to them, particularly with regard to what was accessible in the country's public libraries. The article argues that while the outbreak of the Second World War may have tempered these discussions somewhat, class distinctions surrounding the reading habit continued to shape people's participation in it, thus revealing that even during a period when class divisions were supposedly blurring, attitudes toward social class and leisure remained essentially unchanged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses lower, or working, class reading culture and readership in Victorian era Great Britain, including what are referred to as penny novel's emotional and sensational aspects. An overview of working class women's reading habits during the Victorian period, including female servants' addiction to novel reading, is provided.

A literary criticism is provided on the Briitsh writer and lieutenant Frederick Hardman's article titled "Pacific Rovings," which offered a review of the book "Omoo," by Herman Melville, appearing within the June 1847 issue of the journal "Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine." An overview of the disagreement over the title of Melville's aforementioned book between Melville and the publisher John Murray is provided.

This essay analyzes the Kelmscott editions of William Morris's late prose romances in reference to late-nineteenth-century typographical discourses. It identifies on the surface of the Kelmscott works a previously undisclosed record of print craftsmanship: a coordinated effort by Morris and his print workers to prevent textually encoded forms of distraction from accruing on the printed page. In so doing, it engages with past scholarship that has traced the politics of the Kelmscott book to its utopian methods of print production or to its idealized, textually implicit modes of aesthetic perception. Offering a new way of appreciating this politics, it considers the books' coordinated efforts to eliminate distractions as an organized resistance to the misguided technoprogressive logic informing modern print practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Educational standards documents worldwide include reading and writing of evidence-based argument as a major focus. In order to help students craft arguments that will be considered seriously by those with the power to make changes that affect them, educators need to cultivate within students their sociological imagination - that is, an understanding of the ways in which they are influenced by, but can also influence social structures. This article describes a study in which fourth-grade students (ages 9-10 years) considered issues that were of concern to them and to which audiences they might best address these concerns. They also learned the rhetorical structures required to effectively communicate their recommendations. Data collected include planning documents, rough and final drafts and interview transcripts. Students demonstrated success in a range of areas: grasping the concept of sociological imagination, mastering genre format and assuming roles as citizens of a democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the defoliating and mass printing of playbooks and the development of a reading public in England in the 1600s. Topics covered include the separation of speaker and reader in defoliating the folios of playwrights William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and others, defoliation's referral to a smaller book format production fit for writers being newly collected, and the publication practices of the time. Also noted is the expansion of reading by a divided market for playbooks.

The essay compares and contrasts the novels of early 19th century English women authors Janes Austen and Catherine Hutton, considering contemporary reception and criticisms of their novels. Hutton's novels "The Miser Married," "The Welsh Mountaineer," and "Oakwood Hall" are considered against Austen's works including "Emma," "Pride and Prejudice," and "Northanger Abbey." Topics include books and reading in the early 19th century, the letters of Hutton, and narrative techniques.

The article compares and contrasts the literary works by English author John Dryden created and published by printers and booksellers Henry Herringman and Jacob Tonson the elder. It argues that Tonson helped create the modern field of publishing by acting as a literary agent, marketer, and promoter for Dryden and his works.

Thomas Hall, the mid-seventeenth-century minister at Kings Norton, Worcestershire, was an avid collector and reader of books. The article explores the evidence provided by his surviving books and library lists to analyse how he acquired his books, what types of books he collected and how he categorized them. It then investigates the books themselves to establish his reading and commonplacing practices, making particular use of his copious underlinings and marginal annotations. This reveals an emphasis on practical outcomes for his reading: in equipping him to understand Scripture, advance his pastoral ministry and provide him with material for the polemical works in which he sought to refute the ideas of the heretical sects that emerged in the 1640s and 1650s and advance what he saw as the cause of true religion. Throughout he displays a strong belief in the power of books to promote the struggle for godly reformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses government control of publications in early modern England through censorship and propaganda, focusing on how books and reading became a political act during the time. Other topics include how British publications influenced public opinion on the Spanish Armada in 1588, information on the pamphlet "The Copie of a Letter sent out of England to Don Bernardin Mendoza" by English politician William Cecil, Lord Burghley, and the politicization of religious matters.

The library at Lanhydrock in Cornwall contains many books annotated by its seventeenth-century owners. The complex meanings these books carried depended on their physical location in the Cornish landscape, and the meaning of that landscape was in turn shaped by the presence of the marked books. Early moderns were adept at creating and interpreting such context-specific assemblages of books which projected autobiographical personae. These habits were a means by which book-users could simultaneously fit themselves to their environments (or "habitats") and reshape those environments in a reciprocal process of fashioning. Public reputation was an important consideration guiding these practices. This model of the interaction of books, reputation, and habitat can be extended beyond physical locations like Lanhydrock to help understand how early moderns inhabited their economic culture. Customizing books shaped users as agents equipped with the kind of habitus demanded by the "credit economy" and reproduced its moral codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sebastiaan Verweij presents an analysis of a survey of surviving copies of James VI/I's Essayes of a Prentise in the Divine Art of Poesie (1584, 1585) and His Maiesties Poeticall Exercises in Vacant Houres (1591) in public collections. His survey has unearthed many more readers and owners of the king's books than were previously known, making it possible to shore up previously tentative proposals about the cultural impact of these collections, not only in Scotland but also in England. He also transcribes and discusses in detail three previously unknown manuscript poems of praise to the king that survive in a copy of the 1584 Essayes now at Lambeth Palace Library, and via these poems offers a potential reassessment of the bibliographical makeup of this book. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literary and pedagogic style of books popularizing marine natural history for the British public shifted during the nineteenth century. Previously, natural history books had been written largely by men, with notable exceptions like Isabella Gifford, Mary Gatty and Mary Roberts. Gentlemen naturalists tended to be clerics or medics; educated men conventionally viewing their interest as revelatory of the Divine in nature. Typically, women were less well educated than men but some from clerical backgrounds, having better access to learning, became significant popularizers of natural history. Gosse's works promoting aquaria and 'rock-pooling' (typically among the middle classes), helped to develop a ready market for the plethora of popular seashore books appearing in the 1850s; with coastal access being facilitated by expansion of the railways. Controversies concerning evolution rarely penetrated works aimed at a popular readership. However, the style adopted by marine natural history writers had changed noticeably by the end of the nineteenth century. The earlier conversational dialogue or narrative forms gave way to a more terse scientific style, omitting references to the Divine. Evolutionary ideas were affecting populist texts on littoral natural history, even if only covertly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The manuscript copies of Juvenal translations in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, form a cross-section of English versions of Juvenal for the period c. 1630–1760. Some manuscript translations were copied from existing printed texts. Others were themselves the basis of printed texts. Others again have never been printed (or investigated) at all. Taken as a group, they help to reveal how, why, in what forms, and with what emphases Juvenal was being read, reproduced, and circulated in Britain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Such a body of material can also help us understand, more generally, what kinds of classical translation and imitation went on at this time, in what contexts, and for what purposes; who composed translations; and to some extent who consumed them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This abstract examines the challenges facing the UK publishing industry, as well as the opportunities brought by the advent of digital. The article makes reference to key facts and statistics which illustrate the value of the market, and the publishing market is discussed in terms of its categories: consumer publishing, academic and STM publishing, and children's publishing. The importance of copyright to the business and the developing role of the publisher are examined, as are industry initiatives taking place in the UK to help raise awareness of the diminishing bricks and mortar retail sector. The work performed by publishers and authors participating in initiatives tackling illiteracy and encouraging reading for pleasure as an activity is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]