Volume 27, Issue 1

Background. Leisure reading is important for personal growth, enjoyment and relaxation.
Objective. The study investigates the influence of bilingualism on the leisure reading habits and preferences of female teenage students in Singapore.
Method. An online questionnaire was used to collect data and 464 students from two secondary schools that participated in this study.
Results. It was found that irrespective of ethnic group, 93% of the students speak English at home, and also read leisure books in this language. For both English and mother tongue languages, the most favourite genres are fantasy, adventure, and romance, whereas the least preferred genres are sports, arts and craft, and biography. Students read English language books basically for enjoyment and relaxation, and mother tongue language books for study-related purposes.
Recommendation. The limited interest in mother tongue languages could be a matter of concern for education planners, curriculum designers, and authors of children’s literature. Appropriate measures are needed to encourage bilingual students to also read in their mother tongue language.

Background. In 2010, the Open University of Japan began offering a one-semester face-to-face digital literacy (DL) training course at each of its 50 study centers to help elderly students use personal computers (PC) and the Internet for study. A series of checklists was completed by students before and after each DL training course to assess their achievement.
Objectives. This study identified the degree to which students’ perceived information and communication technology (ICT) skills had changed one to three years after completion of the DL training course. It revealed which skills were retained and which skills declined.
Methods. A survey questionnaire was sent to 2,112 students who took the DL training course and we received 1,153 responses. Questions focused on students’ daily use of a PC and the Internet, and opportunities to learn DL skills after the training course. The same items were used in a checklist to assess ICT skills, and the two sets of data were compared to identify the level of retention of 18 ICT skills.
Results. Overall, scores for 16 of the 18 ICT skills declined. It was found that students who used a PC and the Internet more frequently and those who continued learning by self-instruction or peer learning in the community retained their ICT skills.
Contributions. Visualization of changing patterns in ICT skills helped identify insufficient elements of the DL training course. This information is useful in refining course content and in planning post-course support for DL training attendees.

Background. Books constitute an important and dominant part of the knowledge infrastructure. It is generally held that the form, structural characteristics, and symbolic characteristics of books influence how they are read and how they are understood. Nevertheless, a systematic study of these characteristics of books has yet to be carried out fully.
Objectives. Focusing on the Japanese paperback book series Shinsho, whose mission is generally defined as making authentic knowledge available to lay readers, we surveyed the structural characteristics of books, i.e. the depth of the segments (chapter, section, subsection, etc.), the density of segments, how segments are numbered and/or titled, and how the structure of books are represented in the table of contents. We describe the overall characteristics, the chronological changes in these characteristics since 1940, and the association between these characteristics and the subject content of the book.
Results. It was observed that as time passed, the density of segments increased in general and converged to the current standard, which consists of three levels of segments (chapter, section, and subsection), among which the top two levels are indicated in the table of contents. Books that deal with literature, however, have a significantly lower density of segments.
Contribution. This study has shown that the structure of Shinsho has changed in the past 70 years. This shed light on how our knowledge infrastructure has been arranged and has changed in a relatively short duration within which we tend to overlook changes.

Background. Printed books occupy a privileged position in the knowledge infrastructure of modern society. Nevertheless, their physical and symbolic arrangements and characteristics have not yet been systematically studied.
Objective. We examined several physico-symbolic characteristics of the Japanese paperback book series Shinsho and identified how they changed over the past 70 years. We selected Iwanami Shinsho for analysis, as it has the longest history among the current Shinsho series and is widely held to be the best Shinsho series in providing lay readers with authentic knowledge.
Method. We analysed the physico-symbolic characteristics of the books, including size and thickness of the books, size of live area, and arrangement of characters, and then provided descriptive statistics and plots for these characteristics.
Results. This study revealed some interesting points related to chronological change. First, the height of the live area has increased by 7 mm in the past 70 years, even though the height of the pages has not changed so much. Second, the number of characters per double page spread has decreased since the 1970s. Third, while the size of the content was stable at around 140,000 characters from the 1950s to the 1990s, there is a decreasing trend from the 1990s.
Contributions. Understanding how knowledge for lay readers is represented within books is important, given that the form and arrangement of knowledge representation affects how knowledge is understood. In addition, the results of the study provide useful information for the design of the physico-symbolic characteristics of Shinsho and other book forms.