INTRODUCTION
The present article focuses on the changing role of public libraries with specific regard to the requirements posed by globalization and information society development. These two megatrends have already transformed our world, but in the next 10 to 15 years their impact on the role of institutions such as public libraries will certainly be dramatic. These are not, however, changes that are only imposed outside our societies, local communities, and institutions, but the kind of transformation that is shaped by a dialectic of external and internal changes. Thus, these contextual changes set new kinds of constraints, and present new kinds of challenges and opportunities to public libraries. These changes are visible in such areas as computer literacy, inclusiveness of local communities, equal access to information, and practices of deliberative democracy. Most of these are ‘‘local’’ matters, but they, nevertheless, have a global dimension.
The question of the changing role of libraries is not a new one as such. It has been on the agenda since the 1960s as a minor theme of the modern- ization of public service delivery systems. Yet, within the framework of information society discussion intensified since the 1980s, when the impact of information technology on society became a highly popular topic. For example, in their bookManaging Libraries in Transition,Cargill and Webb (1988)identified a number of factors contributing to the new development phase of libraries. In their view, the most important factors challenging the traditional ways of organizing library services are the development of information technology in general, the growing utilization of networks and projects, and the growing needs of various groups using library services.
According to them, the above factors will bring out a fundamental change that lead libraries to rethink their objectives and functions, and, in fact, their ultimate rationale in society. In the mid-1990s, the breakthrough of the Internet magnified the libraries’ challenges to survive in the information society and to find strategies that would be effective in the ‘‘digital future’’
(see, e.g.,McClure & Bertot, 1997).
Discussion about the changing role of public libraries tends to reflect the social and economic changes occurring at local, national, and global levels.
Let us take Britain as an example. There, the changing role of public libraries had already been noted in the 1960s. At that time, however, the change was seen as a result of a series of structural innovations by which the activities of local authorities were reorganized in the purpose of moving toward efficient and customer-oriented service culture (Kinnell Evans, 1991,
p. 3). In fact, the breakthrough of the public library in most of the indus- trialized countries followed the increased division of labor and democra- tization of society, which took place between 1950s and 1970s. The next turn of events that was most striking in Britain was a neo-liberalist policy under Thatcher’s premiership in the 1980s, which resulted in considerable cuts in public funding for libraries. Since the late 1990s, the values of the so-called
‘‘third way’’ propagated by Tony Blair have been reflected in the govern- ment’s public library strategy. Blair’s Government has been keen to develop public libraries as a ‘‘people’s network’’, putting computers and Internet connections in every public library. This development has been shadowed by tight economic constraints and the continuously increasing demands of innovations, efficiency, and value for money. In strategy papers, public libraries are depicted as social places that are welcoming all. Public libraries are also conceived as networked gateways to knowledge, enabling forces for learning and social inclusion and catalysts for change (Library and Information Commission, 1998;Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2003; see also Muir & Douglas, 2001).
In this article, we review how the major social and economic contexts of public library action are going to change with the current information society development spurred by globalization. We will seek answer to the question of what kinds of challenges these changes pose to library services.
In particular, we will review the role of the public library from the viewpoint of changes taking place with regard to its social function. We hypothetize that institutions such as public libraries stand for structures that support and consolidate life forms in local communities that need to adjust to con- textual changes. In this way, these public libraries can and do serve as mediating and filtering mechanisms in local–global interaction.
Another question closely related to this issue concerns the strategic man- agement of public libraries. In this respect, our main attention will be devoted to the analysis of the current environment of library organization and the basic ways of adjusting libraries to their requirements. When dis- cussing extensive contextual factors, in particular globalization, we draw substantially on Manuel Castells’ (1996, 1997, 1998) theory of the devel- opment of an informational network society. In order to find links between the general level conceptualization of globalization and the specific issues of library developments, we make use of national public library strategy doc- uments. We focus on strategy papers recently produced in two European countries, Britain and Finland, in which the role of public libraries has traditionally been important.
New Premises of Public Library Strategies 63