University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Is the library a political institution?: French libraries today and the social conflict between Démocratie and République

Merklen, Denis

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/94955

Description

Title
Is the library a political institution?: French libraries today and the social conflict between Démocratie and République
Author(s)
Merklen, Denis
Issue Date
2016
Keyword(s)
  • Libraries as political
  • French libraries
Abstract
Public libraries in the outlying suburbs of French cities, which are called banlieues, face many conflicts, occasionally violent. These conflicts take place within the context of important social, cultural, and political transformations that have accelerated during the last fifteen years. Librarians, faced with several competing conceptions of the political role of libraries, seem to waver among démocratie (democracy), République (French Republic), and aspects of libraries that feature in social conflicts in which the classes populaires (roughly translated as “working classes”) are protagonists. The author of this paper shifts from French (his usual language) to English to highlight the place of libraries in the political sphere of contemporary French society.
Publisher
Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/94955
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2016.0027
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2016 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Owning Collections

Library Trends 65 (2) Fall 2016: Libraries in the Political Process PRIMARY
Library Trends 65 (2) Fall 2016: Libraries in the Political Process. Edited by Christine Stilwell, Peter Johan Lor, and Raphaëlle Bats