Faculty
Catherine L. Ross
Professor
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North Campus Building Room 451
Phone: 519-661-2111 x88500
University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7
Fax: 519-661-3506
Email: ross@uwo.ca |
Current Research Interests
My research interests in Information and Media fall broadly into three
areas: reading and the reading experience; the reference transaction;
information seeking and use. In addition, I have published non-fiction
childrens books as well as a biography of Alice Munro and a co-authored
book on Professional Communication skills for library workers. My research
on reading, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council,
is an ethnographic study of adult readers who read a lot and read by
choice. The purpose of the study is to understand the experience of
pleasure-reading from the perspective of the readers themselves. The goal
is to examine the complexity and subjectivity of the reading experience
and bring the voices of readers into the dialogue on reading. Sources of
evidence for the study include both documentary sources and more than 194
open-ended qualitative interviews with committed readers. The research,
which has resulted in a number of conference papers and scholarly
articles, will eventually be reported in a book-length study that will
address the following kinds of questions:
- what value do readers themselves place on reading for
pleasure?
- what factors do readers remember as having fostered or
discouraged reading during their childhood?
- what criteria do readers use to judge the benefits
they get from reading?
- what satisfactions do readers look for in specific
popular genres of fiction?
- what cues do readers use to choose books (and reject
books) in libraries and bookstores?
- what relationship do readers perceive between their
reading and their social worlds?
- what typology is needed to describe the range of
readers who read for pleasure?
Vita
Education
Courses Taught Scholarly and Professional Activities Research Grants Selected Publications Update
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