The growth of social reading platforms such as Goodreads and LibraryThing
enables us to analyze reading activity at very large scale and in remarkable
detail. But twenty-first century systems give us a perspective only on
contemporary readers. Meanwhile, the digitization of the lending library
records of Shakespeare and Company provides a window into the reading activity
of an earlier, smaller community in interwar Paris. In this article, we explore
the extent to which we can make comparisons between the Shakespeare and Company
and Goodreads communities. By quantifying similarities and differences, we can
identify patterns in how works have risen or fallen in popularity across these
datasets. We can also measure differences in how works are received by
measuring similarities and differences in co-reading patterns. Finally, by
examining the complete networks of co-readership, we can observe changes in the
overall structures of literary reception.

通过量化共读模式的相似性和差异性，我们可以比较莎士比亚与公司社区与 Goodreads 社区之间的作品流行度的模式，并且可以观察文学接受总体结构的变化。