A city that makes us live multiple lives: the ethnographic, maieutic, and strategic path of the Libraries Sector of the Municipality of Bologna

Abstract

The article describes the path of strategic redefinition of the Libraries and Cultural Welfare Sector of the Department of Culture and city promotion of the Municipality of Bologna, curated by Kilowatt. A path that started in 2020 from a phase of listening to the staff of the municipal libraries – which made it possible to generate research questions on training needs, reading behaviour and the impact of libraries in the contemporary city – and that today becomes listening to citizenship on a metropolitan scale. Here we present the results of the analyses carried out in the first two stages of the project (Librarian ethnography and Library maieutics) and explore the assumptions and initial results of the two ongoing projects (the ethnographic survey on reading and the process of planning and evaluating the impact of the policies of the Libraries and Cultural Welfare Sector), both promoted by the Pact for reading network in Bologna, a branch of the same sector.