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The Beyond the Book project has had impact upon the personal and professional development of practitioners, especially public librarians, but also book event organizers, and publishing professionals. The project has achieved this impact by identifying the pleasures that readers derive from shared reading, the limitations of large-scale reading events for producing social change, and by situating the organization of such events within an international context. The project has also had an impact on graduate students in several nation-states through the generation of new methods for studying contemporary readers and reading practices.
Research findings inform lectures delivered to educators in English in the local region: both serving teachers and their pupils (Further Education) and PGCE Secondary English students undertaking their school placements locally, and often gaining employment within the Midlands. The impact is in how the teachers use literary texts to engage more effectively with their pupils regarding notions of race and `Otherness'; to develop a tolerant attitude towards those perceived as different; and to be cognisant of the pitfalls in teaching `texts from different cultures and traditions', as stipulated by the English National Curriculum, which might reinforce wider social discourses of `Otherness' around race.
Buddhists and non-Buddhists across the world, educators, students and chaplains are among those who have benefited personally, academically and professionally from the imaginative dissemination of Bristol's pioneering research into Buddhist Death Rituals in Southeast Asia and China. Exhibitions, talks, printed and online learning materials, image archives and websites have all been brought into play. These multiple approaches to the sharing of new knowledge have led to beneficial impacts on a wide variety of individuals, from schoolchildren on the brink of adulthood to people receiving comfort on their deathbed.
The Reading Experience Database, 1450-1945 (RED), housed and developed at The Open University (OU) is the world's largest database about reading habits. An online, open-access project with more than 30,000 entries, it has transformed public understanding of the history of reading. RED is democratising scholarship about the history of reading by encouraging members of the public from any location to contribute and use information about readers through history. More than 120 volunteers from outside academia have already contributed some 6,000 entries. RED attracts more than 1500 users each month from more than 135 countries and has inspired and provided expertise for partner projects in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand.