LIBRARIES AND DEMOCRACY: THE CASE OF THE PUBLIC LIBRARY IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF AN ACTIVE CITIZEN

Abstract

The connection between public libraries and democracy is analyzed from different points of view. The focus of this article covers several matters related to the democratic dimension of the public library. Therefore, aspects related to the political dimension of that institution are analyzed and studied in the context of democracy. A dimension that considers the need to form educated and informed citizens, that is, public libraries that work to support the generation of active citizens, a human conglomerate of men and women that is necessary in order to make democracy work as a way of state, government and life. Consequently, it highlights the meaning and concept of democracy, the political notion of citizen and citizenship, the topic of library and democracy in library science literature, the interrelationship of the educational-democratic prototype and the citizen-democratic ideal, the affinity between permanent learning and democracy, social change as civic-democratic ideal, democratic values in light of the Manifesto for the public library, multiculturalism as a factor inherent to democratic values, between democratization of the freedom to read and the economics of the free market, and the focus of a potentially political democratic citizenship The author concludes by defining the public library as a social institution at the service of democracy, a theoretical perception about which it would be possible to begin to build the notion of political library science.