Enacting property: Making space for the public in the municipal library

By: Contributor(s): Material type: ArticleArticlePublication details: Sage, 2019.Description: Vol 37, Issue 2, 2019 (199-218 p.)Subject(s): Online resources: In: Environment and planning CSummary: The space of the municipal library is changing. Libraries are no longer the traditional haven for quiet contemplation. In many cities across North America and the UK, municipal libraries have become a central social hub, a social service provider and a place of shelter for the marginal. In combination with technological advances and the hovering threat of budget cuts, the space of the library and the multiple publics it serves has becoming increasingly debated. We argue that the library and its changing mandate can be usefully understood through a property lens. The library is not only public space, we argue, but also public property. The manner in which the library, as public property, is enacted, is complicated most immediately by the competing conceptions of the ‘public’ that the library is to serve, but also by the ambivalent relationship between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’, and by the spatiality of the library itself. We demonstrate these complications in the context of changes to the sleeping policy in the Edmonton Public Library in Alberta, Canada (2014–2015).
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Item type Current library Collection Call number Vol info Status Date due Barcode Item holds
E-Journal E-Journal Library, SPAB E-Journals v. 37(1-8) / Jan-Dec, 2019 Available
Total holds: 0

The space of the municipal library is changing. Libraries are no longer the traditional haven for quiet contemplation. In many cities across North America and the UK, municipal libraries have become a central social hub, a social service provider and a place of shelter for the marginal. In combination with technological advances and the hovering threat of budget cuts, the space of the library and the multiple publics it serves has becoming increasingly debated. We argue that the library and its changing mandate can be usefully understood through a property lens. The library is not only public space, we argue, but also public property. The manner in which the library, as public property, is enacted, is complicated most immediately by the competing conceptions of the ‘public’ that the library is to serve, but also by the ambivalent relationship between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’, and by the spatiality of the library itself. We demonstrate these complications in the context of changes to the sleeping policy in the Edmonton Public Library in Alberta, Canada (2014–2015).

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