Welcome to RED, the Reading Experience Database…

Reading is not confined by national borders: readers travel, and books circulate internationally. But how can we trace the evidence of reading across borders? Are authors famous in one country equally admired by readers elsewhere? Search or browse our databases to find out…

RED is a collection of databases whose aim is to accumulate as much evidence as possible about reading experiences across the world. The search and browse facilities enable you to chart the reading tastes of individual readers as they travel to other countries, and consider how different environments may have affected their reading. You can track the readership of books issued in new editions for new audiences in different countries. Search results are displayed on an interactive map and linked to relevant records in national REDs.

Each national RED offers a range of services to users, including profiles of readers, authors, and titles; tutorials on accessing and analysing evidence; and examples of how scholars have used the database to uncover patterns of reading.

To visit national REDs, or to search for readers, authors or texts across all the linked databases, click on the logos on the left.

RED is a new resource officially launched at the end of February 2011. Most of the nations represented by the logos on the left are in the process of collecting data at this time and it may take a few months for search results for these countries to appear on this site. We encourage you to return to this site to try your search again, and we would like to thank you for your patience during this period of resource enhancement.

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