Reader

Reader can mean a person who is reading a text, or a basal reader, a book used to teach reading. It may also refer to:

Persons who read

Places

Reader (academic rank)

The title of reader in the United Kingdom and some universities in the Commonwealth of Nations, for example India, Australia and New Zealand, denotes an appointment for a senior academic with a distinguished international reputation in research or scholarship. It is an academic rank above senior lecturer/associate professor (or principal lecturer in the new universities), recognising a distinguished record of original research. In the British ranking, a reader could be seen as a professor without a chair, similar to the distinction between professor extraordinarius and professor ordinarius at some European universities, professor and chaired professor in Hong Kong and "professor name" (or associate professor) and chaired professor in Ireland. Both readers and professors in the UK would correspond to full professors in the US. At some universities in countries with historically similar university systems, such as Ireland, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Malaysia, the title associate professor is used in place of reader, ranking above senior lecturer.

Reader (liturgy)

In some Christian churches, the reader is responsible for reading aloud excerpts of the scripture at a liturgy. In early Christian times, the reader was of particular value due to the rarity of literacy.

Catholicism (Latin Rite)

In the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church, the term "lector" or "reader" can mean someone who in a particular liturgy is assigned to read a Biblical text other than the Gospel. (Reading the Gospel at Mass is reserved specifically to the deacon or, in his absence, to the priest.) But it also has the more specific meaning of a person who has been "instituted" as a lector or reader, and is such even when not assigned to read in a specific liturgy. This is the meaning in which the term is used in this article.

In this sense, the office was formerly classed as one of the four minor orders and in recent centuries was generally conferred only on those preparing for ordination to the priesthood. With effect from 1 January 1973, the apostolic letter Ministeria quaedam of 15 August 1972 decreed instead that: