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The purpose of this paper is to present the experience of National Taiwan University Medical Library (NTUML) in changing the atmosphere of the library, catering to the needs of current users; attracting potential users to the library; and modifying the library's image from a place filled with stacks of books and clusters of computers to a place where people might relax and enjoy reading.

NTUML commenced the planning stage of the renovation of its Reference Room on the third floor in June 2007. After extensive discussions with the interior designer, the NTUML transformed an abstract idea into the concrete design of the “New Reading Paradise”, a diverse and cozy environment suitable for quiet reading, group discussion and interaction. The “New Reading Paradise” was officially open to public in March 2008. The 992‐square‐meter reading paradise houses a choice collection of books and reference materials, with comfortable, brightly‐lit discussion rooms and ergonomically designed reading tables and chairs.

Records show that from 2005 to 2008 the number of readers using the NTUML Reference Room increased by 52.60 percent. The NTUML conducted a small questionnaire survey of a random sample of its users. Of the 40 respondents, 35 were satisfied with the overall design of the space, and the remaining five thought it was acceptable. A total 37 respondents said that they were more inclined to use the library because of the “New Reading Paradise”.

The paper describes how the library transformed itself to become more in tune with the needs of its users. The Reading Paradise reminds the users to slow down, take a mind break, and enjoy reading and thinking. This is a responsibility of the library.

This paper explores the academic reading behaviors of first-year students in an attempt to understand their experiences and develop potential reading interventions to support undergraduate students.

Researchers used qualitative research methods to elicit in-depth findings regarding reading behaviors. They interviewed fifteen first-year students who had completed a required writing course regarding their reading habits and used open coding to analyze interviews.

Investigators discovered that the narrative from national media that students do not read discounts the volume and variety of texts that students regularly interact with in a variety of contexts. Several themes emerged from the interviews: (1) Students like to read in a variety of designated spaces at any time of the day or night, (2) Students prefer reading in print, but mostly read online, and (3) Students reported difficult vocabulary as the most significant challenge in reading academic texts, but also reported emotional concerns regarding reading.

While previous studies have focused on factors such as format preference and time limitations that influence reading behaviors, this study contributes to the body of research looking at the reading behaviors of college students more holistically, providing new insights informing a range of library interventions to support student success in academic reading. In its use of student interviews, this study offers a student-centered contribution to the literature on student reading behaviors and considers the implications of these behaviors on librarian practice.

This article explores the scientific construction of library olfactory space, based on the case of the olfactory space in the Jiangsu University library. It specifically focuses on understanding the interaction between the physical architectural space of the library and users’ olfactory perception and behavioral activities, with the ultimate goal of creating a deeply integrated olfactory experience in the Jiangsu University Library.

In this article, an empirical research method was used to gather perceptions from 30 university student users regarding the library olfactory space and to understand their olfactory preferences and requirements for its construction. Through qualitative analysis of the interview texts, the study identified correlations between user perceptions and elements of the library olfactory space.

The qualitative analysis of user interview texts and results from the library olfactory space design experiment contributed to the design proposal for the Jiangsu University Library olfactory space. The design proposal for the Jiangsu University Library olfactory space is provided and includes library architecture, activity context, functional services, olfactory experience design and technological applications.

This case study takes the environment, development strategy and user needs of the Jiangsu University Library as its unique research background and as such is not universal or generalizable to other libraries.

This article differs from others by advocating for the innovative architectural spatial design of libraries through olfactory experience, breaking the traditional perception of libraries as solely through visual and auditory senses.

This paper aims to contribute to discussion about the changing role of libraries and their collections, through discussing projects designed by architecture students.

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.

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.

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.

The practice of renovation and construction of university libraries is flourishing, but how to attract readers to use the library is an issue that urgently needs to be explored. Spatial cognition is a subjective judgment of a person's tendency to take action in the future and implies behavioral intention. Based on the sensory–image–cognition relationship, a theoretical model of university library readers' spatial cognition is conducted, and the influencing factors and mechanisms of spatial cognition are explored based on empirical data to provide theoretical references for spatial practices in university libraries.

A visual and art-based mental map approach is introduced based on a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire is mainly used for the specific evaluation of spatial use and the breakdown of the detailed elements, while the mental map method is mainly used for the evaluation of readers' spatial cognition. Relevant empirical data are collected from the library of the Zhejiang University of Technology.

The results indicate that readers' spatial sensory experience and mental imagery have positive effects on readers' behavior via the mediator spatial cognition, readers' spatial sensory experience and mental imagery have a positive effect on readers' spatial cognition and spatial cognition has a significant effect on readers' behavior.

The main contribution of this study is to construct a theoretical model of readers' spatial cognition and to explore the factors that have an impact on spatial cognition and the influence of cognition on behavior. This provides a more rational and in-depth thinking paradigm for the study of university library space and provides theoretical references for library practice.

Addressed to the audience of LIS educators at all levels, from full-time and adjunct faculty teaching in LIS programs, to librarians and library consultants delivering professional development training, to practitioners who work with readers in all types of libraries, this article makes a case for replacing the term “readers' advisory” with the term “Reading Experience (RE) librarianship” as a designator of the current professional practice.

Using historical and discursive analysis based on the extensive literature review, this article argues that a number of factors call for the change in terminology: changes in the human factor (i.e., changes in readers and reading behavior; and changes in relationships between readers and librarians) and changes in the library environment (the rise of “experience” in libraries; a greater commitment to outreach and community engagement; and the fact that librarians are already practicing RE librarianship without recognizing it as such). It also examines the role of LIS educators in fostering and supporting RE librarianship.

On the one hand, the new terminology will be more reflective of the work that reader service librarians currently do, thus doing justice to a wide range of activities and expanded roles of librarians; on the other hand, it will serve as an imperative and a motivator to further transform reader services from in-house interactions with and programs for avid readers into a true community engagement, with much broader goals, scope and reach.

The article stands to coin a new professional term for the transformed library practice, thus recording a radical change in longstanding professional activities and encouraging new community-oriented thinking about the expanded role of librarians in promoting reading in diverse social environments.

This chapter suggests that the unsettling reconfiguration of ‘home’ in works of post-colonial literary adaptation has an affective impact on non-Indigenous readers, contributing, potentially, to processes of decolonisation. Ken Gelder and Jane M. Jacobs, in their book Uncanny Australia: Sacredness and Identity in a Postcolonial Nation, argue that Australian texts which seek to disturb readers by pursuing modes of post-colonial ‘unsettlement’ can activate new discourses and, thereby, inspire social change (1998). Focussing upon undergraduate student responses to two works of Aboriginal Australian literary adaptation, Melissa Lukashenko's short story ‘Country: Being and Belonging on Aboriginal Land’ (2013) and Leah Purcell's stage play, The Drover's Wife (2016), this chapter draws upon ideas pertaining to ‘affect’ to reveal how, through the subversive reimagining of tropes and structures commonly associated with Western dwelling, works of Indigenous literary adaptation elicit emotional responses in non-Indigenous readers and, in so doing, open up new spaces for listening within existing frameworks of white possession.

School climate strikes are opening spaces of appearance, becoming differently active forms of public pedagogy where new and previously unthought collective climate action is possible. This inquiry contributes to understanding school climate strikes as important forms of climate justice activism by exploring how they work as public pedagogy.

The inquiry process involved poetic inquiry to produce an affective poetic witness statement to an event of school climate strikes, and then a performative enactment of diffractive reading using the poem created. The diffractive reading is used to conceptualise school climate strikes as public pedagogy and move towards an understanding of how school climate strikes work as public pedagogy. Diffused throughout is the question of where the more-than-human fits in public pedagogy and youth climate justice activism.

School climate strikes are dynamic and differently acting (diffracting) public pedagogies that work by open spaces of appearance that enable capacities for collective action in heterogeneous political spaces. Consideration of entanglements and intra-actions between learner, place, knowledge and climate change are productive in understanding how phenomena work as public pedagogy.

This inquiry extends on important considerations in both climate change education and public pedagogy scholarship. It diffuses consideration of the more-than-human throughout the inquiry and enacts a move beyond the humanist limits of existing public pedagogy scholarship by introducing climate intra-action, heterogeneous political spaces and non-conforming learning to an understanding of activist public pedagogies and the educative agent.

The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between public libraries, literature festivals (litfests) and reading habits in Chennai and Bangalore to understand publishing, reading and the role of public libraries to improve reading and learning among public.

A field visit to select book fairs and litfests in Chennai and Bangalore was undertaken in 2015 and 2016 to collect data. A predesigned questionnaire was used for data collection at the festivals to establish the correlation among the libraries, bookshops, book fairs and litfests. A sample of n = 445 responses were received.

The findings suggest that 47 per cent of the respondents do not have any kind of library membership, and most (n = 154) of the respondents say they own an electronic device for reading. In total, 25 per cent say reading books is one of the top leisure activities, and distance (31.7 per cent) hinders people from visiting libraries for reading. Eighty per cent agree that visiting litfests influences and improves reading habits. Further, 48.4 per cent read books several times a week, and 46.7 per cent read 5-20 books in any given year. In total, 84 per cent agree that there is a significant link between a family’s reading habits and a child’s future attitude toward reading. Also, 74 per cent agree that people who buy books from bookshops also borrow books from libraries and vice versa and endorse the fact that there is a strong relationship between book buyers and library visitors.

Litfests are booming to promote literature in India. There is a lot to be done to promote public libraries as a public good for people in India as a third space for reading, inclusion and diversity. Innovations in social media and networks, information and communication technologies and internet give an opportunity to the library sector to tap the litfest phenomenon to celebrate reading to reach a large section of the society.

This is a unique exploration to connect the stakeholders – policy makers, publishers and libraries – associated with reading, as studies of this nature are rarely reported in India, when print and digital publishing is flourishing.

This research article presents an exploratory case study of the sociotechnical landscape of BookTok, and how young people use it to connect with others around the books they love, or those they love to hate. By observing the interplay between young people, books, and the technology (TikTok) that connects them, this study aims to explore how blending analog and digital media tools makes reading social and fun.

The authors selected three bestsellers available in English and Danish, and BookTokers who made related videos. This study used a qualitative, ethnographic (Pink, 2021) approach to explore interactions on the app. Inductive coding (Saldaña, 2021) helped the authors identify themes, and connect to areas of inquiry.

During the pandemic, TikTok and BookTok offered young people opportunities for reading engagement in social, bookish communities by using technology to promote reading in print. In doing so, their actions made reading and being a reader highly entertaining.

As an exploratory case study, this research is not generalizable. But the findings will apply to future work on reading, publishing, and connected learning in a sociotechnical landscape.

BookTok connects print and digital formats, offering innovative possibilities for young people’s connected learning and reading promotion in schools and libraries.

Because TikTok is a relatively new tool, and its sub-community BookTok became popular during the COVID-19 pandemic, research on this topic is still in its earliest stages.