On Libraries and the Public Sphere

What do we lose when we lose a library, A conference about the future challenges of libraries. 9 - 10 - 11 September, 2015

On August 25, 1914, the German army deliberately burned the university's library of Leuven along with 300,000 medieval books and manuscripts. On January 28, 2013, Islamist rebels set the library of Timbuktu with thousands ancient manuscripts on fire. Many books of this library were about Islam. On January 9, 2015, the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris shocked the world. It was seen as an assault on free speech. Thousands of people marched in Paris to defend democracy and freedom of expression. Meanwhile the Flemish Government discharges the municipalities of the obligation to organize libraries. In all the discussions during the last weeks, nearly no one established clearly the relation between the democratic right of free expression and the importance of libraries, both the large and the small, as sources of knowledge and opinions. One of the characteristics of totalitarian ideologies and regimes is the destruction of problematic information and limiting free speech through control of the written culture. In our changing world, we are convinced that we have full access to all information thanks to the Internet. But we often forget that this information is particularly superficial and at the same time easy to manipulate. Within this context, the meaning of a library, especially a national heritage library such as the Royal Library of Belgium, as a repository for intellectual and cultural heritage remains of exceptional importance. The aim of my contribution is to develop this idea by means of the rich collection of newspapers preserved in the Royal Library of Belgium. These newspapers are not meant to be kept and their future is threatened by acidification. To preserve them, they are systematically digitized. The importance of newspapers lies in the richness of information: political, ideological, economic, social, cultural, and so on. Newspapers not only provide information, but also offer a contemporaneous interpretation and comment upon events. And because of this they also outline the history of (or the absence of) freedom of speech. So, our archive of newspaper helps critical citizens to inform themselves about the contemporary history, just like literature, philosophical or historical books, and so on. What do we lose when we lose our libraries? We lose an instrument of democracy! A democracy needs cultural and intellectual education. Cultural education is focused on personal and social development, on raising awareness, on acquiring the competence and willingness to participate in social life. From a social point of view the importance of cultural education cannot be underestimated. Cultural education shapes our identity and makes us democratic beings. This being said, we must define libraries, as well as archives, as repositories of heritage and knowledge, as institutions which form the basis for a healthy democracy. So, I am convinced that in addition to scientific research one of the most important tasks for the educational activities of the KBR is in particular the enhancement of cultural competence that everyone needs to be able to participate as a critical citizen in public life.

Library Trends, 2007

The pillage and burning of Iraq's National Library and its National Museum in the spring of 2003 sent cultural shock waves around the world. "Stuff happens," Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary for Defense, declared offhandedly, dismissing these events. 1 But such events, and the variety of responses that they evoke, raise a number of urgent historical questions to which the articles in this volume represent tentative answers. The collections and services of libraries and related agencies, such as museums and archives, are important components of social and institutional memory. They are both physical places of intellectual work and highly symbolic places. They represent national and cultural identity and aspirations. They are venues for individualized access to educational and cultural resources. They are also part of an infrastructural continuum for disseminating information, forming opinion, and providing literate recreation. At one end of the infrastructural continuum lie telecommunications, mass media, and more recently the Internet and the World Wide Web. Libraries have traditionally been situated at the other end of this continuum as places of access to the historical diversity of opinion represented in cumulating collections of printed materials, though in the digital era they are clearly moving to a more central position on this continuum.

2007

The pillage and burning of Iraq's National Library and its National Museum in the spring of 2003 sent cultural shock waves around the world. "Stuff happens," Donald Rumsfeld, the U.S. Secretary for Defense, declared offhandedly, dismissing these events. 1 But such events, and the variety of responses that they evoke, raise a number of urgent historical questions to which the articles in this volume represent tentative answers. The collections and services of libraries and related agencies, such as museums and archives, are important components of social and institutional memory. They are both physical places of intellectual work and highly symbolic places. They represent national and cultural identity and aspirations. They are venues for individualized access to educational and cultural resources. They are also part of an infrastructural continuum for disseminating information, forming opinion, and providing literate recreation. At one end of the infrastructural continuum lie telecommunications, mass media, and more recently the Internet and the World Wide Web. Libraries have traditionally been situated at the other end of this continuum as places of access to the historical diversity of opinion represented in cumulating collections of printed materials, though in the digital era they are clearly moving to a more central position on this continuum.

The Identity of the Contemporary Public Library, 2016

Informazioni sul catalogo e sulle ristampe dell'editore: www.ledizioni.it Le riproduzioni a uso differente da quello personale potranno avvenire, per un numero di pagine non superiore al 15% del presente volume, solo a seguito di specifica autorizzazione rilasciata da Ledizioni. 8 MARGARITA PÉREZ PULIDO-MAURIZIO VIVARELLI posed studies by students (Maria Pagano) or recent graduates (Ilaria Giglio and Maria Maiorano). Finally, in the Appendix, the volume includes a brief selective bibliography on the identity of the public library, compiled by Maria Senatore Polisetti. The editors believe this volume, and the essays herein contained, may help further feed an already ample debate, in Spain, in Italy and in the better part of the rest of the world. The public library certainly was an institution and organisation which played a prominent part in 19 th and 20 th century European history. And still today it has its place in an extremely relevant field from the conceptual, metaphorical, symbolic and documentary standpoint, as it can be seen for instance in the countless plans for large public libraries both envisaged and rea-lised, whose often uncertain and problematic specific identity brings to the fore the tensions and torsions of a classical model spoiled by criticalities of different sort and kind. It is indeed for its relevance for socio-cultural as well as LIS studies, that we believe this subject to be rather interesting and topical, and thus we hope these early results may resonate with the different interest groups this book addresses, that is academic scholars, professional librarians, students from diverse educational paths.

2020

During the 21st century, library and information scholars have set out to theorize the role of public libraries as public spheres. Most of this research is engaging with Habermas’ early work on the structural transformation of the public sphere. Even though Habermas has continued to develop his theories on the public sphere and deliberative democracy throughout his carrier, library and information scholars have to a limited degree engaged with his more recent work. Simply relying on Habermas’s early work when theorizing public libraries as public spheres is limiting, but in addition to getting up to speed on Habermas’ theoretical development, library and information scholars should also familiarize themselves with a broader set of public sphere theories. In this paper, I will give a short presentation of Habermas’ work of relevance for public libraries, I will give a short presentation of some additional theories of public spheres, and I will present key concepts in studies of publi...

The Library Quarterly, 2017

consistently put forward the research agenda of the library in the life of the user. A focus on libraries' publics is a useful variation: What, now, is the library in the life of its public(s)? In order to undertake this analysis, some practical definition of libraries' public(s) must be clarified, and how they might have changed in recent (neoliberal) times. With this background in place, an analysis of how publics now approach libraries is possible-and clarifies library responses within our current neoliberal environment. T he distinguished library and information science (LIS) scholar Wayne Wiegand (1999, 24) never tires of quoting his colleague Doug Zweizig's remark that LIS scholarship traditionally focused on "the user in the life of the library rather than the library in the life of the user." Wiegand has repeated this theme for some time in an attempt to influence the research agenda of the field: What role, if any, do libraries play in the lives of people? This article is a version of his attempt to refocus LIS research by addressing the concept of the public and reformulating the Wiegand/Zweizig theme: What, if anything, has changed in the nature of the public in its expectations of and interactions with libraries in a neoliberal age? In other words, rather than focus on individual users, this analysis looks at users in a particular aggregate-as a public or as publics. My previous work (2003, 2012) focused on the library as one of the remnants of the Habermasian public sphere being chipped away by internal processes that mimic neoliberalism: mindlessly imitating management practices and fads, accountability/social capital/return-on-investment analyses of the institution, outsourcing of core functions such as collections and management, and silly and faddish investments in technology (such as gaming) that erode core functions. I argue that we're changing what a library is and what it is for without much real thought or discussion. The LIS field has not helped (let alone led) in terms of thinking through neoliberal trends or providing a sensible alternative to them. This state of affairs then elicits a version of Wiegand's question: What is the library in the life of its public now? And what is the role of a library's public in these transformations? Has the public that interacts with the library changed, and if so, how? In order to attempt an

Against the Grain, 2014

2015

The crime at the beginning of this century must not be forgotten! It must be over 20 years since my first (and only?) intervention in web4lib, an electronic discussion forum for library-based online managers. web4lib has been neatly archived on the Internet, but the archive only reaches back to April 1995. I therefore had to dig into my old mail folders at the 'Cable's Knot' in Helsinki, Finland, to retrieve my letter. Here it is below, headers and all