Retrieving Readers: Library Experiences

Abstract

The history of readers and reading is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that draws from a variety of academic traditions. A key issue is not only to make the link between texts and their historical readers but also to uncover how and why people read. This poses special difficulties for the practices of so‐called ordinary readers, those who lived relatively anonymous lives and who are unlikely to have left personal papers in archives. But libraries can help provide the vital social context for the reading of nonelite groups. The five essays in this special issue use a variety of research methods and data to provide examples of how libraries and library records can provide a window into the reading practices of individuals and groups that range from antebellum users of an American subscription library to Australian soldiers in two world wars to Latino students at a twenty‐first‐century American university.

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