13 Libraries and Democracy in Germany. As Perceived by the Public in Contrast to the Professionals

Abstract

This study in the context of project ALMPUB “Archives, Libraries, Museums as Public Sphere Institutions in the Digital Age” takes as its starting point the fundamental criticism voiced by Paul Jaeger and others (2013), namely that discussions on the relationship between libraries and democracy lack empirical evidence. This takes into account theNordic approach that considers the three key institutions of knowledge – libraries, archives and museums – together. Project partner Håkon Larsen provides an overall conceptual explanation of why these three institutions are comparable as public spaces and arenas of political discourse (Larson 2018). The current research landscape has been explained in a report published in the Journal of Documentation and the results of representative population surveys in six countries are given in another recent article in the same journal (Audunson et al. 2019a, 2019b). The initial analyses of the survey of occupational fields were presented at CoLIS 10 (the conference “Conceptions of Library and Information Science” taking place every three years) in Slovenia in June 2019 (Audunson, Hobohm, Tóth 2019, see also Audunson, Hobohm and Tóth, this volume). The starting point of the European project with partners from more than six countries was to establish the extent to which national populations attribute different roles to libraries in comparison to other countries, but also in comparison to the self-perceptionsof libraryprofessionals in each respective country. Theproject is explained in more depth in the present volume. The starting points are similar projects by Ragnar Audunson and his team who for over two decades have dedicated themselves to understanding the role of the public library as a place in society (cf. e.g. Audunson 2005). The European network “Libraries in Urban Space” can be traced back to an interdisciplinary conference in Potsdam in 2012 with the title “The City of Flows – Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Digital City in Analogue Spaces”.