Join JPI UE
Faq
FAQ
Please click here for the frequently asked questions we collected.
If you have an additional questions you are welcome to mail us at info@jpi-urbaneurope.eu
Public libraries are long-acknowledged places for information provision and knowledge transmission, but they increasingly also function as important socio-cultural infrastructures contributing to the everyday life in cities. However, austerity pressures heavily threaten libraries’ function as spaces of encounter. ILIT examines how public libraries in Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands as socio-cultural infrastructures address systemic challenges in rapidly transforming societies. It deploys the analytics of ‘infrastructuring’ and ‘librarising’ to unpack libraries’ transformative capacities to develop best-practice, community-oriented solutions for resilience in austerity urbanism. Focusing on innovative library practices, the research goals are to 1) enhance libraries’ institutional support for libraries, 2) strengthen libraries’ capacities as local places of community and care, and 3) amplify community librarianship as innovation driver towards community-based developments. Using an innovative mix of ethnography and creative approaches, the interdisciplinary team uses stakeholder and critical policy analysis, interviews, participant observation and shadowing. In addition, ILIT develops co-productive zine-making as an innovative participatory method, engaging library staff, patrons, urban government authorities and other stakeholders to simultaneously study and cultivate a sense of community and social infrastructuring performed in and through public libraries.
Public libraries are long-acknowledged places for information provision and knowledge transmission, but they increasingly also function as important socio-cultural infrastructures contributing to the everyday life in cities. However, austerity pressures threaten libraries’ function as spaces of encounter. ILIT’s aim was to examine how public libraries in Austria, Sweden and the Netherlands as socio-cultural infrastructures address systemic challenges in rapidly transforming societies. Deploying the innovative framework of infrastructuring/librarising – as opposed to the nouns infrastructure and library – the selected practice approach underlined that libraries are constantly in flux, open-ended, changing and contested. The research team investigated the (in)formal practices that staff, patrons, policy-makers and other stakeholders employ to provide, perform, maintain, safeguard and retool libraries as important socio-cultural infrastructures, particularly in diverse communities struggling with systemic challenges such as unemployment, segregation and discrimination. The research focused on three themes: community librarianship, institutional support and local involvement.
As main units of analysis, the project focused on library networks, in which libraries share collections, best practices and other relevant knowledge. ILIT studied three library networks: Büchereien Wien (Austria), Biblioteken i Malmö (Sweden) and Bibliotheek Rotterdam (the Netherlands). These networks each consist of multiple library branches; we selected two branches per network to acknowledge their different spatial contexts: the central library and a neighbourhood branch. Using a mix of ethnography and creative approaches, the interdisciplinary team used stakeholder and critical policy analysis, interviews, participant observation and following librarians during their daily activities. In addition, ILIT developed co-productive zine-making as a creative and participatory method, conceptualised by ILIT’s social designer in interaction with scholarly team members. Engaging different audiences, including library management and staff, patrons and urban government authorities, we aimed to simultaneously study and stimulate a sense of community in public libraries. While many libraries already deploy zine-making programmes as a lowcost visitor activity, we used it as both a data collection and community-building tool. Co-productive zine-making offers opportunities for reflection and mutual understanding to foster education, exchange and encounter between different stakeholders. Zine-making can act as a creative tool that pushes researchers to be more (self-)reflexive. Yet, despite these benefits, zine-making does not come without challenges. In two papers, we provide insights into both practical and ethical issues we encountered before, during and after the organisation of the zinemaking workshops in our project (Rivano Eckerdal & Engström, 2024; Van Melik et al., 2024). For example, zinemaking requires the development of the necessary skillset, including creativity, reflexivity, flexibility and empathy. Moreover, using it both a tool for data collection and community-building proved difficult, as one objective can compromise the other.
The ILIT team consists of scholars in library and information studies (LIS), geography, political science, anthropology/European ethnology, and social design, as well as library professionals on management and policy levels. The rich interdisciplinary expertise is held together by a commitment to support the transformative capacity of public libraries and a shared interest in everyday public spaces, agonism and ethnographic/experimental research methods. On a conceptual level, we have integrated and further developed concepts beyond our disciplinary backgrounds, starting by introducing ‘librarising’ as a political verb building on the concept of infrastructuring. Team members from LIS applied political philosopher Mouffe’s agonistic approach to the challenges librarians are facing, resonating with colleagues previous agonistic readings of space, urban interaction and cultural heritage. The agonistic approach draws attention to how library-ness is performed and contested in everyday situations. This enriches ethnographic perspectives as well as LIS. European Ethnology draws on Actor-Network theory and wider relational approaches to conceptualise the city, resulting in an awareness of non-human actors such as library buildings in shaping the urban assemblage. Team members from geography and anthropology combined their cultural approaches by building on theories of practice, elaborated in sociology as well as in European ethnology, which resulted in a theoretical grounding for studying practices as well as symbolic meaning- and value-making. The interdisciplinary collaboration has led to an opening-up of new experiences and network opportunities, such as visiting conferences outside the own discipline. Moreover, it has created much awareness about the importance of language and labelling of concepts in different disciplines and languages (e.g. different terms used to refer to people coming to the library across different countries such as visitors/users/patrons, the preference to use ‘following’ rather than the more politically-loaded ‘shadowing’, or the use of English terms such as third space or community in Dutch, Austrian or Swedish language policy documents).
Theme 1: Community librarianship. As social infrastructures, public libraries are increasingly recognised as providing more than access to books and information; librarians’ work is importantly centred around practices of care. However, the ways in which they provide care is poorly researched, let alone conceptualised. Our first paper explores how this important part of librarians’ daily work is practiced through the lens of infrastructuring. The paper first theoretically discusses the concepts of social infrastructuring, care and tinkering. Then, it turns to ethnographic research conducted in the public library networks of three European cities: Vienna (Austria), Rotterdam (the Netherlands) and Malmö (Sweden). The paper comprises empirical materials from all three countries and unpacks 16 librarians’ daily working routines of care through participant observations. The empirical analysis resulted in three modes of social infrastructuring in public libraries: (1) maintaining, (2) building connections and (3) drawing boundaries. Practices of care are prominent in each of these infrastructuring modes: librarians infrastructure the library with and via their care practices. Whilst care practices are difficult to quantify and verbalise, they are valuable for library patrons. By using the concept of tinkering, the article conceptualises librarians’ infrastructuring enactments as crucial community-building aspects of libraries. By focusing on the enactment of social infrastructuring, the paper goes beyond a descriptive approach to understanding public libraries as important social infrastructures. Rather, the paper unpacks how libraries come into being as infrastructuring agencies by highlighting what librarians do and say. Our international study articulates the importance of care practices in public libraries across different national contexts (Rivano Eckerdal et al., 2024).
Theme 2: Institutional support. Our second paper investigates how (inter)national, provincial and local policies envision and support libraries as social infrastructures in three European cities. Drawing on 32 semi-structured interviews with library management and associations, politicians and civil servants, policy document analysis and collaborative zine-making workshops, the paper describes the multi-level policy landscapes of the public libraries of Rotterdam (the Netherlands), Malmö (Sweden) and Vienna (Austria). Focusing on the themes of policymaking, funding and the discursive positioning of libraries revealed three related institutional tensions, which we systematised into three spectrums: between top-down and bottom up, short-term and long-term, and universal and group-specific. Our findings illustrate how libraries are constantly in the making and have to negotiate and legitimise their meanings and actions, whilst entangled in library policies and political landscapes on multiple geographical scales (Van Melik et al., in review).
Färber, A. & Hamm, M. (2023), Dasein: Wie Öffentliche Büchereien trotzdem zur städtischen
Daseinsvorsorge beitragen. Dérive 92/93: 62–64. https://derive.at/texte/dasein/
Rivano Eckerdal, J., L. Engström, A. Färber, M. Hamm, J. Kofi, F. Landau-Donnelly & R. Van Melik
(2024), Social infrastructuring in public libraries: Librarians’ continuous care in everyday library practice. Journal of Documentation, 80(7): 206-225. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-12-2023-0260
Rivano Eckerdal, J. & L. Engström (2024), Bringing the social: Infrastructuring libraries through zine-
making workshops. The Journal of Creative Library Practice. https://creativelibrarypractice.org/2024/03/14/bringing-on-the-social-infrastructuring-libraries-through-zine-making-workshops/
Van Melik, R., J. Kofi & F. Landau-Donnelly (2024), Studying and cultivating a sense of community
through collaborative zine-making in public libraries. Area. e12960. https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12960
Van Melik, R. F. Landau-Donnelly, L. Engström, A. Färber, M. Hamm, J. Kofi, J. Rivano Eckerdal (in review)
Infrastructuring the policymaking, funding and positioning of libraries: Unpacking tensions in public library policies in three European cities.
For an overview of all ILIT output, including zines, policy briefs, blogs and columns: https://transforminglibraries.net/publications
Duration: 2022–2025
Website: https://transforminglibraries.net/
Contact: Dr. Rianne van Melik – Radboud University, the Netherlands
E-mail: rianne.vanmelik@ru.nl
Budget: 979.513 Euro
Partners (participants in project):
Radboud University (NL): dr. Rianne van Melik, dr. Friederike Landau-Donnelly & Jamea Kofi, MSc (Radboud University)
Lund University (SE): dr. Johanna Rivano Eckerdal & dr. Lisa Engström
University of Vienna (AT): prof.dr. Alexa Färber & dr. Marion Hamm
Alessia Scuderi (AT)
European Bureau of Library Information and Documentation Association (EBLIDA)(NL): Ton van Vlimmeren
Region Skåne (SE): Emelie Ive
Stadt Wien-Büchereien (AT): Karin Claudi