Reading matters: why we’re bringing freshers to book

This was interesting, and mirrors our findings. We began as a student-academic research project from within our MA Publishing course. Having heard of similar schemes in the US, we surveyed a representative sample of our first year cohort in 2014-15 to find out a) how they spent their leisure time, b) what part reading for pleasure played in their leisure time and c) whether, if a shared reading scheme had existed before arrival, they would have taken part. Finding very positive responses in all cases (and much higher value placed on reading for pleasure than we had anticipated), our VC wanted to go ahead immediately - and he chosen the book. Nick Hornby is a Kingston alumnus and 'About a boy' made a very good choice, enabling us to get started straightaway - it's about London, about transition and settling in - and the author was willing to come and talk to the students. Our experience was similar - the students loved it (consistent reports of feeling 'welcomed' and 'expected' and delight at receiving a 'present') but just as significantly our staff also responded very well - feeling 'included' and more conscious of community. Whole departments used the title for team building and the library staff set up book groups as a result. For our second year we had more time to consult and, again working as a student-staff research project, we asked for title suggestions from across the community. Having researched how books are chosen for such schemes in the US, we were very keen that this should be a community initiative rather than over-curated by any discipline or management group. We had over 100 suggestions and then worked with our IT department and a data analyst to develop an algorithm. After discussions with students and staff, we fed in all the coordinates that it was thought would make a good Kingston choice (e.g. we wanted a book by an author who would come to Kingston and talk and not one that had been on the GCSE syllabus), and coded the suggested titles accordingly - leaving the Hornby book on the list so we could see how that scored in comparison with the new titles. This was how we generated our short list of six books (the first shortlist for a literary prize to be generated by computer?) which was then read by a panel drawn from across the whole university: staff; students; administrative and academic colleagues - including four from Edinburgh Napier University who will be joining us this year, so we can compare outcomes from within two different institutions. Our final choice was Matt Haig's 'The Humans' (Canongate) and we are looking forward to welcoming him in September. You can read about what was learned from working across a whole university here: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/12-tips-how-work-across-university and the first academic paper on The KU Big Read has just been accepted by Logos, and will appear in the next edition. Assoc Professor Alison Baverstock, Director, The KU Big Read, Kingston University