Knowledge, citizenship and development: a few notes about the public library as a social right

Abstract

The paper examines the role of public libraries in promoting knowledge, supporting citizenship and facilitating individual – as well as community – development.
Edgar Morin’s concept of “reliance” suggests the ability of contextualizing information, transforming it into knowledge, and establishing a connection between separate knowledge processes. Libraries can borrow several ideas from this concept, proposing themselves as active branches of a new educational system which should provide not only access to information, but also the opportunities and tools that today are essential for a critical reading of the world, life, and society.
Public libraries have become tightly entwined with democracy, citizenship and social rights – three major issues of Western Europe’s welfare politics, now on the wane because of the global economic crisis. Therefore, now more than ever, it is important to understand how to revive the democratic and social function of public libraries, and to sustain them as inalienable expressions of local welfare.
Eventually, the concept of development is almost boundless, allowing innumerable interpretations. With respect to public libraries it can be related to the idea of cultural and social improvement of the community, but it must also be related to citizens’ well-being, intended as the free expression of their personal capabilities: in this perspective, public libraries can legitimize themselves as spaces and places of actual opportunities.