The summer before third grade my parents were, to put it mildly, frustrated by my lack of interest in reading. I did love books; my mom would read to my sister and I almost every single night. However, I wasn’t so fond of reading them myself. So, they came up with an oh-so-genius plan: for every book I read, I got paid a dollar. Now while I wasn’t much of a reader at the time, I was always up for a good deal. That summer, I read constantly, to the point where my parents had to decrease my pay-per-book to 50 cents. Eventually, though, I developed my own love of reading and my parents no longer had to bribe me to get lost in the pages of agood book.
Despite the best efforts of many parents and the frustration of teachers across all levels, recreational reading is at an all-time low. This phenomenon stretches into college life, where the state of dorm libraries is abysmal. While dorm libraries are never an advertised feature of Wellesley’s academic life, they pose an opportunity for collective dedication to reading. However, these libraries frequently fall short of their potential.
As the most accessible collections on campus while Clapp is closed, dorm libraries tell a clear story about reading on the Wellesley campus. There is no formal organization system for these books, meaning the contents of each residence hall vary greatly. Some, like Munger, have a variety of textbooks, classics and a few contemporary novels while others, such as Tower, contain little to no modern literature. Lulu’s collection within the Anderson Forum is also notable – it largely showcases reference materials, similar to Tower. Despite the large volume of titles that reside in these nooks across campus, recreational reading materials are in short supply and are frequently outdated.
The emphasis on academic texts may factor into a lack of recreational reading at Wellesley and reflects the general downturn in the prevalence of reading across the United States. The National Assessment of Educational Progress reported only 43% of fourth graders achieved reading proficiency on the 2022 exam and an absence of full-text usage in elementary and middle schools reported by the EdWeek Research Center corroborates this lack of mastery. Experiencing a truncated literary education during primary schooling may be impacting both the academic and recreational lives of college students; if undergraduates are struggling with the long-form texts required by classes due to underdeveloped reading stamina, additional voluntary reading seems a meager possibility.
While the closed library and consequently limited access to books pose barriers, reading as a leisure activity can still be encouraged via campus initiatives, such as the “Rec Reading” request form. The QR code can be found around the Mods, which holds the current collection of leisure reading materials. This form allows students to solicit titles for acquisition by the college in order to bolster access to recreational reading. Nevertheless, this effort is not widely known, largely due to the building’s distance from the central campus. Increasing usage of social media or spam to advertise what the Mods offer in regard to leisure reading could augment the visibility and usage of these resources.
Additionally, improving the state of our dorm libraries is far from impossible. One of Wellesley’s most beloved unofficial traditions is Sustainability Bins, where Wellesley students can donate clothing or furniture items they no longer need. These items are then available to Wellesley students until they are collected and donated at the end of the year or resold at the start of the year in the annual Sustainability Sale. As a start, we could use a similar model for our dorm libraries: at the end of the year, Wellesley students can donate books they no longer need. While this is an imperfect system, some of these books likely need to be donated to outside organizations due to spacial concerns anyway. This creates a tradition of annual donations, which could increase the likelihood that dorm libraries would at least contain up-to-date textbooks and novels from the past decade. While both of these strategies are unlikely to solve the recent decrease in recreational reading, they are achievable first steps to revitalizing a culture of reading here at Wellesley.
