Putting Crises behind Us: A New Opportunity for Libraries

Public libraries in the outlying suburbs of French cities, which are called banlieues, face many conflicts, occasionally violent. These conflicts take place within the context of important social, cultural, and political transformations that have accelerated during the last fifteen years. Librarians, faced with several competing conceptions of the political role of libraries, seem to waver among démocratie (democracy), République (French Republic), and aspects of libraries that feature in social conflicts in which the classes populaires (roughly translated as “working classes”) are protagonists. The author of this paper shifts from French (his usual language) to English to highlight the place of libraries in the political sphere of contemporary French society.

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.

MediaTropes, 2015

Libraries and their relationship to print culture are commonly thought of in warm, familiar terms or conversely with invidious overtones of old-fashioned-ness. Neither of these tells the story of the internal discourse and struggles within them, however. Libraries have been the sites of a working-through of neoliberal ideas down to a very basic level in communal and educational institutions. Throughout this process, the institutions have been guided by a management culture that continually declares a crisis to shape and guide them, and that crisis culture itself has largely responded to an unexamined arc of development that has lead to neoliberalism. This feedback loop—broader economic and social agendas that go unnamed, yet shape and form library institutional leadership and practice—has meaning for print culture. This paper reviews the sources and ideas of my work primarily in two books over the last decade.

2021

This collection presents current themes in the field of modern libraries and their users, united under a common title: “Library and Society: Contemporary Challenges.” The texts have already been published in different Bulgarian sources. They are now published in English in this edition with minor changes. The included publications present the author’s interest in contemporary problems and challeng- es facing the library community. The lecture format is intentional, as it gives the opportunity for the edition to be used for work with an audience of students. The lectures are accompanied by presentations in English that are not part of this collection. The topics of the lectures are as follows: • Technology and the human factor in the formula for effective- ness of the modern library • The role of users in the preservation of cultural heritage • The attitude of libraries towards users determines the present and the future of the institution • The value of the library in the modern dim...

Digital Library Perspectives, 2019

Purpose Based on a comparison with different realities, analysis of the situation of libraries in line with International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) policies and directives. Design/methodology/approach The method used for the following paper is that of a remote interview. Findings The expected results will emerge from the debate that can be raised from this paper. Research limitations/implications The IFLA guidelines have international value but are implemented according to the context of the individual country, not always in a uniform manner. Originality/value The interview reveals the formality of the contents through the informality of the method.

Library Trends, 2014

Innovative Instruments for Community Development in Communication and Education, 2021

The dynamics of libraries called to reinvent themselves can only be weighed by the success recorded by the institutions in the strict area of their professionals and, broadly, by their popularity in the community whose members appreciate the quality of the services they provide. The examples of innovative library activities and services going to be presented speak about a change of mentality and responsibility in such institutions becoming more and more visible in the life of the community they serve. Innovation is accomplished through various solutions: 1) either integrative, by the “democratization” of the librarians’ contribution to specific activities, deeply influencing information access, or 2) collaborative or relational, aiming at getting various user target groups involved in their activities through careful study of their needs, or 3) by direct participation in all possible ways in building communities, with general, educational or research purposes directed towards all the categories of users. David Lankes’ much used citation, “Bad libraries only build collections. Good libraries build services (and a collection is only one of many). Great libraries build communities” was never more actual than today. This is because libraries can no longer afford being static and stick to their traditional services. On the contrary, in order not to lose their users, they have to strive for them by getting involved in the life of the community to which they belong by means of innovation and creativity.

The aim of this thesis paper is to understand the change in the relationship between libraries and society as part of the effects of today’s changes in technology, to analyze how this change is a reflection of how the very structure of information is being altered by the ways it is conveyed through digital platforms, and to trace its social impact. We are a culture of the book, the way we perceive and interact with the world has been shaped by the implications of print culture, and now this way is being transformed by the implications of digital culture. The different properties attributed to digital technologies enable people to have a more active and significant role in the construction of knowledge in culture.

Library & Information Science Research, 2005

The events of September 11, 2001 were tragic on many levels: they affected almost all facets of society, including the library institution. In many ways, that date acted as a catalyst in the library community, calling into question traditional library values and ethical principles, as a result of the politically charged climate and the post 9/11 legislations. This article examines the legislative environment following 9/11 in the United States and Canada and reviews the reactions to these legislations by the library communities in these two countries. The findings point out to mixed reactions from the library communities in the two countries. The results are used to frame and discuss the broader role and responsibilities of libraries in a post 9/11 environment.

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2014

The current global financial crisis is the biggest economic upheaval for all libraries around the world and especially for those in Southern Europe. Due to this crisis, Greek and Cypriot libraries face many problems deriving mostly from their state funding and personnel reduction. The paper focuses on the effects on operation and services of Greek and Cypriot libraries, and the impact caused by salary reductions and personnel layoffs on their actual survival. A survey was conducted through an online questionnaire available in Lime Survey to all Greek and Cypriot academic, public and special libraries. Responses were gathered and analyzed. In conclusion, the paper proposes some ideas for the development of new services and activities that may help libraries to deal with the effects of financial crisis and help them stay alive and to reactivate their users support.

Revista Română de Biblioteconomie și Știința Informării = Romanian Journal of Library and Information Science, 2018

Contemporary libraries need to redefine, to diversify their activities and services so that they can face the challenges of the new information and communication environment. To reach this goal, libraries need to integrate into the community and play an active role in educational, cultural, and social activities. This article aims at portraying the contemporary library from the perspective of its role in the community. It aims at synthesising opinions and results of sociological research in North American literature, thus pointing out theories and good practices for the Romanian space. Literature shows that ensuring access to information and documentation is no longer the dominant activity of libraries. Together with this activity, there are also educational and cultural activities and even leisure activities that define the community role of a library. People come to a library not only for information, research, and reading activities, but also, increasingly, to carry out group community activities, for cultural activities, or even for socialisation activities. Contemporary libraries need to be keepers of a community memory and a reliable partner of authorities and community institutions in their endeavour to carry out projects and activities.

Performance Research

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