In July, the results of a survey conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts revealed a two-decade decline in the reading habits of Americans. The report titled Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America 1 found that Americans of every gender, race, ethnicity, income, education, and age were reading less literature. It also found that this decline in literary reading is accelerating rapidly. Are any of us really surprised? Personal computers, the Internet, video games, VCRs, CDs, DVDs, and iPods provide us with many leisure time options. Options that were not widely available 20 years ago. However, reading is different from all of these. While people may think of reading as a very passive activity, it is not. Literary reading requires concentration and sustained focus. It engages your memory, nourishes your imagination and enlarges your world.

In addition, the Reading at Risk Report shows a correlation between literary reading and civic participation. If you are a reader, you are 300 percent more likely to do volunteer work, visit art museums, and to attend performances. And, you're 200 percent more likely to go to a sporting event. Dana Gioia, the Chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts stated in a recent interview, "If we believe that democracy depends on civic participation, this is an alarming trend." 2 What can be done to reverse this trend? What role can the university play in encouraging literary reading?

I am delighted to tell you that with the leadership of President Shi, with input from students and faculty, years of planning by library faculty and staff, architects and Facilities Services personnel, and the generous donations from Furman trustees and friends, our campus now has one of the most tangible symbols of the importance of reading and of life-long learning. We have a beautiful new library.

What role will the James B. Duke Library play in creating a community of readers?

First, the Library will provide an environment that encourages reading. In the expanded and renovated Library, you will find over 800 reader seats in beautiful, spacious areas conducive to reading and to contemplation. Our 26 group study rooms offer you opportunities to work collaboratively on assigned projects and to engage in free-flowing discussions while maintaining quiet areas for study.

Second, the Library will offer the best collection of resources available including literature.

The Duke Library has over 400,000 volumes and over one million items. The expanded and renovated library has made it possible to organize and display these intellectual riches in a way that will encourage you to browse.

Third, the Library will provide outstanding access to its collection of materials through our Library website and to the wider world of digital information through the Internet.

Our wireless network will enable you to work anywhere in the building from a laptop, and to access over 100 databases and thousands of journal articles and e-books from the Library's website. There will be 90 public desktop computers available throughout the building and in the coming weeks, computers will be available 24 hours a day/7 days a week from the student lounge.

We are a library "with and without walls," a library of "bricks and clicks" and so you can also access our digital resources anywhere on campus through a network connection or from off-campus through the university's proxy server.

Fourth, the Library will generate excitement about learning outside of the classroom and make available programs that encourage reading.

Students, I realize that many of the courses that you take require a lot of reading. There may be so much reading that "reading for fun" may have absolutely no appeal to you. But I would encourage you to make time for your own reading-to delve into literature - to feed your soul.

In November of last year, Linda Julian, Professor of English died after a long struggle with cancer. Dr. Julian was an outstanding teacher, a wonderful colleague, and a voracious reader. She often told her students: "Your homework is to curl up with a good book and read for hours." 3

Above all, she was passionate about the work of Charles Dickens. After her death, I read David Copperfield. It's the story of a young boy whose father dies before he is born, whose mother dies in his youth and who has to endure a cruel stepfather. In the scene that I would like to share, young David recounts how despite his enduring constant and unjust punishment by his stepfather, reading books helped him to cope and provided him with enjoyment.

"The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months or more, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I believe I should have been almost stupefied but for one circumstance. It was this."

There was … "a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it adjoined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, …Tom Jones, the Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time … and did me no harm; for whatever harm was in some of them was not there for me; I knew nothing of it. It is astonishing to me now, how I found time, in the midst of my porings and blunderings over heavier themes, to read those books as I did." 4

Just as David Copperfield was able to transcend his unhappy circumstances and find enjoyment, so too, can we, through literary reading.

One tangible way the Library encourages you to venture beyond the required class readings is to offer a Leisure Reading Collection. In this collection you will find not only critically acclaimed fiction and non-fiction but also books on timely topics and the latest best-sellers. With the expansion and renovation of the James B. Duke Library we now have space that is appropriate for hosting special events that will be of interest to you. President Shi has named the upcoming school year as "The Year of the Library." Throughout the year, the Library will partner with a variety of academic departments and student groups to sponsor activities that will celebrate our new facility and encourage our becoming a "community of readers."

The first event will be on September 30th when the Friends of the Library will sponsor a reception for author Tim O'Brien. This is an opportunity to meet the author of the Academic Reading Community book titled The Things They Carried. 5

The second event celebrating "The Year of the Library" will be held on October 28th. After seven years of planning and two years of living in a construction zone, we in the Library are eagerly awaiting the dedication ceremony of the expanded and renovated James B. Duke Library. The quotation selected as an embodiment of this special occasion is "A library is a mirror to the past and a window to the future." That quote is from Vartan Gregorian and he will be our featured speaker. In this short passage from his autobiography titled The Road to Home, he recounts his years growing up in Tabriz, Iran, and how reading and having access to books positively affected his life.

"I read every evening, sometimes late into the night, with the help of kerosene lamps, often secretly, past my bedtime. The solitude and the silence were for me heavenly gifts that enhanced the joy of reading. The more I read, the more I had to read. One book led to another, one author led to another, one subject led to another. …Books freed me from my prison, transported me far away to a wonderful realm of possibilities, to a life of beauty, compassion, generosity, excitement, justice, intense passion, incessant action, and fun. 6

Dr. Gregorian is president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, former president of Brown University and former president of the New York Public Library.

We also plan to partner with the Greenville County Libraries to bring in guest speakers. For instance in the spring, we eagerly anticipate a visit from Dana Gioia. He is the first poet ever to head the National Endowment for the Arts, the agency that released the "Reading at Risk" report that I mentioned earlier.

Chairman Gioia was the first in his family to attend college. After receiving his undergraduate and MBA degrees from Stanford and a Masters in Comparative Literature from Harvard, he spent fifteen years as a marketing executive for General Foods in New York before becoming a full-time writer. Appointed NEA Chairman by President Bush in 2003, he has provided leadership for several innovative projects including "Operation Homecoming -- a program for U.S. military personnel and their families which is aimed at preserving the stories and reflections of American troops who have served our nation on the frontlines -- as in Afghanistan and Iraq." 7

Another program that I am especially excited about and one that will require your participation for it to be a success is titled "The Power of Words." The idea for this program came about as a result of a casual conversation with a member of the Political Science Department, Professor Brent Nelsen. We are planning to set aside several days during the year when students, faculty, staff, administrators, trustees and Furman friends will have the opportunity to share portions of their favorite book, story, poem, or essay. On these special days, volunteers will read aloud the words that have been influential in their own lives. Again, I hope that many of you will participate!

Thanks to the generosity of donors we now have one of the finest libraries among liberal arts colleges in the nation. As we begin this "Year of the Library" may we celebrate its restoration as the center of the university's intellectual life and as a dynamic learning environment for students.

References

1. National Endowment for the Arts, Reading at Risk: A Survey of Reading in America, Research Division Report #46, June 2004. (Available online at http://www.arts.gov
2. PBS Lehrer News Hour, "Joy of Reading," Interview with Jeffrey Brown, August 24, 2004.
3. David Shi, Memorial to Dr. Linda Julian, http://www.furman.edu/president/coljulian.htm.
4. Dickens, Charles, David Copperfield, Oxford University Press (UK), 1999, pg 53.
5. O'Brien, Tim, The Things They Carried: A Work of Fiction, New York: Broadway Books, 1998.
6. Gregorian, Vartan, The Road to Home: My Life and Times, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003.
7. Gioia, Dana, "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience," http://www.arts.gov/national/homecoming/about.htm