May 8, 2025
I never put much effort into keeping up with this blog after I was successful in securing my present position as University Archivist at San José State. Afterall, I started this site so that when prospective employers Googled me they could find all the information I wanted them to have access to in one shiny package. I’ve kept the domain just in case I needed it for something in the future, but have done little with it beyond occasionally uploading an updated CV.
Now as I embark on a new phase of my research on Transformative Information Encountering (TIE), maybe it is an opportunity to turn over a new leaf with this blog as a place to digest ideas from my research as they arise, and before they are ready to be woven into a scholarly publication. We shall see if I make it past this one post. Does anyone even read blogs anymore?
Maybe my mother. (Hi, mom!)
Last night I stole a few minutes before baby-bedtime to read a section of Louise M. Rosenblatt’s Making Meaning With Texts, which I am grateful to Dr. Scott Jarvie, SJSU professor of English Education for recommending when I was picking his brain about Reader Response Theory. Specifically, I read Part 2, Section 6, “The Literary Transaction: Evocation and Response,” and was quickly transported into my internal contemplation zone by Rosenblatt’s discussion of efferent versus aesthetic reading.
To summarize, Rosenblatt describes all reading as taking place on a continuum between efferent (reading for information) to aesthetic (reading for enjoyment), and which end of the continuum the reading leans towards is not always determined by the literary genre (73). That is, a reader might read non-fiction aesthetically, or have an aesthetic experience while reading it (as I have during some of my most-cherished experiences with my favorite non-fiction books). Likewise, a reader might read fiction or poetry efferently, seeking the information contained in it rather than the enjoyment of reading it. By describing it as a continuum, Rosenblatt does not suggest that this is a dichotomy, but rather two types of reading that can be more or less present in a reading experience (74).
Along this continuum a reader could theoretically be reading purely efferently or purely aesthetically, or exactly at the midpoint between the two, but most reading likely happens somewhere in the in-between places.
I used to love a good two-ended continuum, but then I was introduced to another way of conceptualizing a continuum thanks to the Genderbread Person at itspronouncedmetrosexual.com. The problem with the above conceptualization of a continuum is that it implies that the more aesthetically I am reading, the less efferently, and vice versa. But it can also be conceptualized such that I can dial up my levels of efference or aesthetics independently of one another:
I prefer to think of these two types of reading on their own independent continuums. It better accounts for my experiences of reading books like Undrowned by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, which is simultaneously marine biology and prose poem.
I have not yet read enough Rosenblatt to know what she would think about these two conceptualizations of her reading continuum.
Rosenblatt’s discussion of efferent versus aesthetic reading and what it means for teachers of reading is highly engaging but is not what got my wheels turning as my current pressing research question is what are the mechanisms at play when someone reads a book (or hears a song, or sees a movie, or hears a speech, or otherwise encounters an information resource) and changes their world view or deeply held beliefs.
Working with data from my recent qualitative interview study, I discovered that when I asked my participants to describe resources that had an impact on their thinking about the world, they tended to emphasize personal narrative and works of art. But when I asked my participants to walk me through their transformative experiences, the resources they identified were largely analytical, scholarly, or journalistic in nature. This has implications for the types of resources information professionals (i.e. librarians and archivists) collect and highlight when engaging with our communities.
Adding this layer from Rosenblatt has me wondering if my interview participants can recall whether they were approaching these transformative resources with more or less efferent and/or aesthetic mindsets, and whether I can find any correlation between how they approached a resource and the impact it had on them.
There is much in the LIS Information Encountering literature on the importance of a prepared mind to whether a serendipitous encounter with information will have an impact. I am wondering if it’s possible to discover whether an efferent or aesthetically-attuned mind is more or less open to serendipity and transformation.
I hope to have the opportunity to explore this in my upcoming oral history project and am looking forward to contemplating and sharing what I may uncover.