We invite our readers to walk with us the pleasant and interesting path that these eight conversations indicate.
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In Italy, reading “for reasons not strictly educational / professional” represents a marginal activity. ISTAT data show that in the population that has reached the age of 6, only 44.3% of Italian citizens and 35.5% of citizens read at least one book a year.
“In 2019, just under half of readers (44.3%) said they had read at most three books in the 12 months preceding the interview; these are the so-called “weak readers” which include just under half of male readers (47.4%) and people between 11 and 14 years of age (47.0%). 15.6% are among the “strong readers” (with at least 12 books read in the last year), an increase of 1.2 percentage points compared to 2018. The greater propensity of women to read is also found in the reading intensity: 16.7% say they read a book a month on average against 14.1% of men. ” (ISTAT Report “Production and reading of books in Italy – Year 2019”).
An survey of the Sardinian Messaggerie, a non-specialized bookshop, reports that only 2% of the turnover of books sold last year concerned scientific popularization texts.
The media, in turn, pass from a purely sensationalist representation of environmental issues to a type of dissemination of information using languages that are so specific as to be incomprehensible to most. Furthermore, most Italians deal with scientific topics only in school or use sources that are not always reliable, also because they are not always able to assess their reliability.
The need to have a large audience of citizens able to deal with all the old and new problems that the countless environmental issues currently pose, have inspired See with new eyes, a series of conversations and reading proposals that try to put together information exact scientific and pleasant popularization approaches.
See with new eyes is a proposal developed by EARTH GARDENERS and Messaggerie Sarde addressed to readers from all over Italy. Getting in touch with scientists and experts who combine scientific dissemination and the involvement of independent libraries in their research, can help promote this kind of reading and help push the general public to take an interest in scientific topics.
