Reusing Historical Questionnaire Data and Using Newly Commissioned Oral History Interviews as Evidence in the History of Reading

King, Edmund G. C.; Parmar, Maya and Towheed, Shafquat (2019). Reusing Historical Questionnaire Data and Using Newly Commissioned Oral History Interviews as Evidence in the History of Reading. Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies, 16(1) pp. 530–553.

Abstract

Interviews, whether freestyle or structured, printed or recorded, offer historians of reading valuable insights into the practices and preferences of individual readers. Despite the potential biases that can be generated by the interview format, the reshaping of memory through the process of retelling, and the questions that can go unasked (and therefore, unanswered), the individual interview can be a richly textured source of information for historians of reading. In this article, three researchers involved in both the recently completed Reading Communities: Connecting the Past and the Present project and the ongoing historically focussed UK Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 project (UK-RED) examine the ways in which interviews can capture individual records of reading, both in the past and the present.

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