Public Libraries - Arenas for Citizenship: An Investigation of the Public Library as a Meeting Place in a Digital and Multicultural Context, 2006-2011

The project aims at studying the public libraries' potential of functioning as public spaces and meeting places with a capacity of fostering social capital in multicultural urban communities. Citizenship implies a feeling of community with fellow-citizensand with the polity in question. Community, in turn, is dependent upon a minimum degree of shared identity. These shared values are an integrated part of social capital. In today's multicultural and digital society, creating common arenas capable of fostering community is not a trivial task. As both a public space and a centre of knowledge and culture, the public library has a potential for being a vital part of a local community. It is used by most segments of society and it is a junction where different cultures as well as different spheres of life meet - education, leisure and entertainment, work and business. This research project is aiming towards an understanding of the role of the public library in the making of social capital. The project aims at studying: 1. The extent of and ways the library is taken into use as a meeting place, e.g. as an arena for undistorted communication in the Habermasian sense, as a social meeting place preventing social isolation and as a meeting place promoting local identity, history and culture. 2. Perceptions regarding the librarys potential in generating social capital. 3. The library's role as a low-intensive meeting place. 4. The interplay between digital and physical arenas, and 5. Community differences. Barriers to community participation and citizenship and, thus, the character of the meeting places needed, may vary between communities/urban spaces, e.g. according to the proportion of ethnic minorities, education, age-distribution, employment, local history and local traditions etc. The study aims at generating knowledge about such variations and the research will therefore be undertaken in three different communities in Oslo varying along such dimensions and in Tromsø.本项目旨在探究公共图书馆作为公共空间与聚会场所的潜力——此类场所在多元文化城市社区中具备培育社会资本（social capital）的能力。公民身份意味着个体与同胞及所属政治共同体的社群归属感，而社群本身则依赖于最低限度的共享身份认同。这些共享价值观是社会资本的有机组成部分。在当下的多元文化与数字化社会中，搭建能够孕育社群共识的公共场域并非易事。作为公共空间、知识与文化中心，公共图书馆具备成为地方社群重要组成部分的潜力。它面向社会绝大多数群体开放，是不同文化乃至生活各领域——包括教育、休闲娱乐、工作与商务——交汇的枢纽。 本研究项目旨在理解公共图书馆在社会资本构建中所扮演的角色。本项目拟开展以下研究： 1. 图书馆作为聚会场所的使用程度与使用方式，例如：以哈贝马斯（Habermas）意义上的无扭曲沟通场域为定位的使用、作为预防社会孤立的社交聚会场所的使用，以及作为促进地方身份认同、历史与文化传播的聚会场所的使用。 2. 关于图书馆在催生社会资本方面潜力的认知调研。 3. 图书馆作为低门槛聚会场所的角色定位。 4. 数字场域与物理场域之间的互动关系。 5. 社群间的差异。社群参与与公民身份参与的阻碍因素，以及由此所需的聚会场所的特征，可能因不同社群/城市空间而异——例如依据少数民族占比、教育水平、年龄分布、就业状况、地方历史与地域传统等维度产生差异。 本研究旨在探明此类差异的相关规律，因此将在奥斯陆的三个具备上述不同维度特征的社群，以及特罗姆瑟开展调研工作。