What a Reading List Is Really For: Plain Words from the Study Library

A term that sounds stricter than it is

Students often arrive expecting a reading list to behave like a syllabus: a fixed run of titles, each to be finished before the next. In our study library it works differently. A reading list is a short, ordered set of books and guides chosen to sit alongside one of our programmes, so that what you hear in the classroom has something to rest on afterwards.

I teach camera work, so I notice the gap quickly. A student watches me explain how to hold a frame steady on a handheld shot, nods, and then forgets half of it by the weekend. A well-chosen chapter on framing, read the same week, fixes the idea in place. That is all the list is for: it gives the session a second voice that you can return to at your own speed.

Nothing on the list is a test, and nobody checks whether you have reached the end.

How the lists are put together

Each list belongs to a programme rather than to the library as a whole. The field camera list gathers material on framing, exposure, sound and moving with a camera on your shoulder. The writing list leans on scripting to picture and checking facts. The order matters more than the length, because the first title is meant to be the easiest way in.

Tom Ashworth looks after the shelves and keeps the lists current, and he is the person to ask when a title feels too dense for where you are. We curate rather than collect. A book earns its place because a tutor has seen it help someone, not because it is well known or because it fills a gap on the shelf.

Where two books say much the same thing, we keep the clearer one and let the other go.

• Lists are tied to a programme, not to the whole library
• Titles run from the gentlest entry to the most demanding
• Tom Ashworth can advise on where to begin
• A book stays only if tutors have seen it help

Reading at your own pace

The study library is built for people who fit learning around shifts, family and travel. Some students read a chapter on the train; others set aside an evening a week. Both are fine. The lists carry no deadlines, because a reporter who is on a story in the field cannot always open a book, and the material will still be there when the week calms down.

What I do suggest is reading in step with your sessions rather than ahead of them. If this fortnight we are working on audio on location, read the audio chapter now and leave the lighting chapter for later. That keeps the page and the practice close enough that one can correct the other.

In these darker autumn weeks, when daylight for outdoor exercises is short, indoor reading is a sensible use of the time between shoots.

Reading with a camera or a notebook beside you

A book on broadcast craft is not meant to be read like a novel. I ask students to keep the camera, a pen or a script beside them and to stop whenever a passage describes something they can try. A paragraph about exposure becomes a ten-minute exercise by a window. A paragraph about cutting between two shots becomes a small edit on your own footage.

This is where the list does its real work. Reading alone gives you vocabulary; trying the idea gives you judgement. When a student returns to a session and says that a certain page made no sense until they tried it, I know the list has done its job. The doing and the reading belong together.

Keep short notes in your own words, not copied lines, because rewording is how you find out whether you understood.

• Stop at any passage you can test straight away
• Keep notes in your own words, not quotations
• Return to a chapter after you have tried it once

When to put a book down

Not every title suits every reader, and struggling through a chapter that is not helping is a poor use of an evening. If a book has lost you after a few pages, set it aside and move to the next on the list; the order is a guide, not a rule. Often the same idea appears in a gentler form elsewhere, and returning later to the harder book goes better with a little more experience behind you.

I would rather a student finish two books they used than half-read six. Reading lists attract guilt, and guilt is no help to anyone learning a craft. What matters is that something from the page turns up in your next piece of work, however small, whether that is a steadier frame or a cleaner line of script.

If a list still feels too long, ask Tom to point you at the single most useful title for your stage.

Using the library alongside the classroom

The library is not a replacement for sessions with a tutor, and the lists do not stand in for practice with a camera in your hands. They are the quiet part of the programme: the part you do alone, between meetings, when nobody is watching and the only judge is whether the idea holds up the next time you try it.

Students who use the lists well tend to ask sharper questions in class. They arrive having met a term in print, and instead of asking what it means they ask why it works the way it does. That is a better conversation for everyone, and it lets the tutor spend the session on the problem rather than the definition.