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Cited by 53Library Science and AdministrationInformation Science and LibrariesLibrary Science and Information

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Libraries and the Decline of Public Purposes

Buschman, John·2005·Public Library Quarterly
DOI 10.1300/j118v24n01_01
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Abstract

This article explores the idea of the democratic public sphere, and it is grounded in the work of Jurgen Habermas. Libraries help make possible the democratic public sphere ideal in the form of rational organization of human cultural production and they embody an essential element of democracy: a place where the ideal of unfettered communication and investigation exists in rudimentary form, hosting the turbulent discourse of a democracy and its culture. However, the trend of viewing and running libraries along business and profit models- “the new public philosophy” -represents a dismantling of the democratic public sphere. This can be seen in examples as varied as the rhetorical shift from “patron” to “customer,” the current struggles for funding and the justifications used in that process, to coffee bars, no retrospective collections, and the bias toward economically-useful electronic resources. The article ends with the argument that, if we forget this role and reason for being and abandon public purposes, then we are helping in the demise of the democratic public sphere and cutting away at the long-term justification for libraries. It is worth reminding ourselves that the value of a good library-like good teaching-is extraordinarily difficult to quantify.

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Metadata

Authors
Buschman, J.
Affiliations
Rider University (US)
Corresponding author
Buschman, John
ORCID
Buschman, John
Venue
Public Library Quarterly
Publisher
Informa UK Limited
Published
2005-01
Volume
24
Issue
1
Pages
1-12
ISSN
  • 0161-6846 (ISSN-L)
  • 1541-1540
DOI
10.1300/j118v24n01_01
OpenAlex
W1976960908
Cited by
53
References
0
Citations by year
2026: 4 · 2024: 2 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 2 · 2020: 13 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 2 · 2017: 4 · 2016: 3 · 2015: 4 · 2014: 3 · 2012: 2
FWCI
6.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Locations
Public Library Quarterly (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Library Science and Administration
  • Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Information Science and Libraries
  • Social Sciences › Library and Information Sciences › Library Science and Information
Keywords
democratic public sphere, Jürgen Habermas, library mission, New Public Management, library funding, electronic resources, democratic discourse

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Data sources

Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.

Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.