Retooling the public library as social infrastructure: a Dutch illustration

Abstract

Public libraries are more than information providers; they increasingly serve as key social infrastructures. Financial pressures, decreasing membership and digitalisation require libraries to reinvent themselves as primarily spaces of an encounter. This paper focuses on the retooling of small public libraries in the Netherlands as social infrastructure and the formal and informal library practices ('infrastructuring') that are required for the library to function as space of encounter. The paper reports on an in-depth, single-case study based on 15 years of volunteering, participant observations, repeated interviews with staff and informal conversations with patrons. By examining the multi-purposed features of a single site, we illustrate how the library, as an exemplary public space, is being retooled by both staff and patrons. While encounters mostly seem to occur within rather than between groups, there are many meaningful acts of kindness between different people. Though the library is undeniably a social infrastructure, the paper also shows how difficult it is to document, let alone practice this social function. La transformation des bibliothèques municipales en infrastructures sociales: un exemple aux Pays-Bas RESUMENLas bibliotecas públicas son más que proveedoras de información; cada vez más sirven como infraestructuras sociales clave. Las presiones financieras, la disminución de la membresía y la digitalización exigen que las bibliotecas se reinventen a sí mismas como principalmente espacios de encuentro. Este artículo se centra en la remodelación de pequeñas bibliotecas públicas en los Países Bajos como infraestructura social y las prácticas bibliotecarias formales e informales ('infraestructuración') que se requieren para que la biblioteca funcione como espacio de encuentro. Informa sobre un estudio de caso en profundidad basado en 15 años de voluntariado, observaciones participantes, entrevistas repetidas con el personal y conversaciones informales con patrocinadores. Al examinar las características multipropósito de un solo sitio, ilustramos cómo ARTICLE HISTORY

Doing the work: Locating labour in infrastructural geography

“…Geographic scholarship engaging with social infrastructures deploys the concept of social reproduction to highlight the myriad relations, networks, practices, and assemblages that sustain collective life. In doing so, this scholarship reconfigures what is understood as infrastructural by focusing not on materiality and its physical dimensions, but in the underpinning role that the delivery of social, emotion, and relational resources or support entails, including questions such as education, childcare, and care, along with more ad hoc or multipurpose relational networks (Layton and Latham, 2022; van Melik and Merry, 2021). Key in this literature is the role of practice, which often overlaps and parallels conceptualisations of ‘people as infrastructure’, while drawing more clearly on feminist theorisations of care ethics and social reproduction.…”

Routinised practices of community librarians: Daily struggles of Dutch public libraries to be(come) social infrastructures

“…The rationale is that even if young people only dance or game in the library, they still become familiar with the library space for potential future use (cf. Van Melik and Merry, 2021).…”

“…This resulted in the library de facto serving as day shelter for homeless men causing clear tensions with and resistance from other library users. Eventually, the no sleeping policy was reintroduced, illustrating the difficulties of developing new practices and serving multiple publics (Van Melik and Merry, 2021).…”

“…Public libraries are long-acknowledged places for information provision and knowledge transmission, but they increasingly also function as important social infrastructures contributing to the everyday life in cities. They can stimulate a sense of community, social cohesion, integration, physical safety and mental wellbeing, which is much needed in times of increasing exclusion and societal gaps (Klinenberg, 2018; Latham and Layton, 2019; Schloffel-Armstrong et al, 2021; Van Melik and Merry, 2021). Different urban populations encounter each other in public libraries, including social minorities such as older, unemployed or homeless people (Peterson, 2021; Robinson, 2020).…”

Social geography II: Space and Sociality

“…Latham and Layton (2020) discuss how the social infrastructure of everyday sports and fitness practices – such as parks, schools and community spaces – emerge and evolve in cities to aid kinaesthetic practices that lead to health, wellbeing and connectedness, allowing individuals and communities to flourish. For Van Melik and Merry (2021), the library is conceptualised as a site of ‘infrastructuring’ wherein organising lunch meetings, cultural events and classes to stimulate encounters become ways of repurposing the library into a type of social infrastructure to enhance community wellbeing. Likewise, McQuaid et al (2021) focus on how older adults constitute the connective tissue of social infrastructures that anchor urban life, including expressing agency to socially navigate (Vigh, 2009) policies, the built environment and intergenerational relations (see also Wignall et al, 2019).…”