Reading around the world: A web‐based application for creating a communal knowledge base of reading materials
Limor Tamim, Eleri Staiger‐Williams · Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology · 2018
ABSTRACT Reading has many benefits, and has been shown to improve verbal abilities, concentration, imagination, and memory. Diverse reading materials have also been shown to reduce prejudice; perspectives drawn from different experiences and locales evoke empathy in the reader. To encourage diverse perspective taking, the Reading Around the World Challenge (RAWC) encourages people to read one book from every country. However, there is a lack of materials available for some countries, and existing books are not well known. Further, challengers take part individually or within existing social groups, and there is currently no means of exchanging book lists with other RAWC participants. To address this issue, we created RtWTrack, a web‐based prototype, which features a publicly available book database and visual map, that aggregates bibliographic data about reading materials and makes it publicly available.