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‘I Only Hate Broccoli’: The Library as Place in 21st Century America

  • Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
  • 2010, 44(4), pp.61-74
  • DOI : 10.4275/KSLIS.2010.44.4.061
  • Publisher : 한국문헌정보학회
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Library and Information Science
  • Received : September 5, 2010
  • Accepted : October 6, 2010

Wayne A. Wiegand 1

1Florida State University

Accredited

ABSTRACT

By taking a bottom-up “library in the life of the user” perspective rather than a top-down “user in the life of the library” perspective, this paper uses anecdotal evidence from the past and near present to examine the multiple roles the U.S. public library plays and has played as public space in the everyday lives of its patrons. By harnessing “public sphere ” theory discussed in Jürgen Habermas’s THE STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE (1989) and by the examining the rich literatures on civic life and institutions that have evolved from it, the author argues that Library and Information Studies discourse has to expand its scope to include research and analysis of “library as place” from a user’s perspective if it hopes to develop a deeper understanding of what the public library does for means to members of the communities in which they reside.

Citation status

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