The Remediating Library

Abstract

The ambition of this article is to investigate the consequences of changing the perspective on the public library’s services. Through legislations, most public libraries are obliged to make its services available ‘for everyone’, but at the same time there are often provisions on specific groups which must receive special attention. In this article, the public libraries’ services are tentatively considered a kind of remediation provided by public authorities through its cultural institutions. Overarchingly, the market economy still applies but is also regarded as the one major phenomenon distorting people’s living conditions in late modern societies. Public libraries remediate this distortion at an interpersonal level by providing institutionalised cultural services. Authorities accept this exception from the market economy because cultural activities are considered valuable ways to continuously reintegrate people into society. The present investigation is based on group interviews and is analysed from Cultural Studies’ critical approach to the structure formation of late modernity and the culture political trends currently active in Denmark. Considering the study’s limited empirical evidence, the study cautiously concludes that the cultural area’s exemption from the market economy provides the area’s various stakeholders - citizens, library staff members, and politicians - an alternative platform. But cultural activity is not only beneficial promoting tolerance, involvement, and interpersonal contact. Seemingly, cultural activity may also be used in various stakeholders’ efforts to demarcate, stigmatise, and marginalise other stakeholders and their legitimate claims