A practical typology of adult fiction borrowers based on their reading habits

Abstract

This paper applied a typological procedure, developed by Lazarsfeld from the social sciences, to a set of qualitative data on fiction reading habits for the purpose of forming a practical typology of fiction borrowers. The data were collected from a sample of 300 readers in two medium-sized UK public libraries over a two-month period. The procedure, using an inductive research approach, first mapped readers along six dimensions of reading habits which emerged from the data - frequencies of borrowing, the number of authors currently read, the literary/recreational orientation of reading, searching approaches usually applied, sureness (confidence) in book selection - and then proceeded to reduce the number of combinations formed by these dimensions, based on their relationships. A typology of seven types of fiction borrowers was thus devised: readers of particularism, readers of frequent literary pluralism, readers of infrequent literary pluralism, readers of frequent recreational pluralism, readers of infrequent recreational pluralism, readers of frequent universalism and readers of infrequent universalism.