Four Democratic Potentials in Public Libraries: A Model

The goal of this research was to examine information needs of students in democratic society with the emphasis on their perception and use of the public library in satisfying democratic and civil rights. In the research were used quantitative methodology (printed questionnaires) and participants were students of information sciences in Osijek (Croatia). Although research results showed that students mostly never (41%) or rarely (40%) searched for the information regarding their civil and democratic rights, they found that these rights were mostly important to them (mean 3.28). Less than a half of the respondents had information needs for democratic and civil rights in the area of education (42%). As expected more than a half of the respondents informed themselves about civil and democratic rights over the Internet (57%), while only 6% of them looked for that information in public libraries. Students mainly agreed that public libraries should provide access to the civil and democratic rights information (mean 4.13) by preparing public lectures, discussions, workshops or appropriate materials such as brochures (63%). Research data can be useful for public libraries in organizing collections and services for the support of democracy and civil rights.

This study compares cultural policy, public libraries, and the public sphere in Norway, the United States, and Japan. Results of the comparison indicate that Norway emphasizes physical meeting spaces and the public sphere. In Japan, there is more emphasis on the literary public sphere. Norway and Japan have strong centralized governance structures, which influence how public libraries function in the public sphere. In the US, cultural policy administration is more diffuse and local. There is not an explicit national cultural policy related to public libraries. In the US, legitimation of public libraries in the public sphere is strong and occurs locally. Public libraries in the US are used less as public sphere infrastructure and more for educational and recreation purposes. The results of this comparison are significant for understanding public libraries and the public sphere from an international cultural policy perspective.

ABSTRACTPublic library systems intersect with both public and private spheres of social life, but how they do so remains a mystery. Many believe private influences distort the public sphere in public libraries, and if so, then library legitimacy suffers, raising normative and material concerns for library systems. To better understand how libraries negotiate public legitimacy and private influence, we approached the problem using a communications system framework. We used qualitative content analysis to examine data from three US public library systems: Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, New York Public Library, and Cary Memorial Library in Lexington, Massachusetts. We recorded the many ways private actors communicate with and through public library systems. Then, we analyzed the signals in terms of their components: transmitter, receiver, medium, and message. We found two dimensions: in the Public Sphere dimension, private actors govern, legitimate, and use the library, and in the Private Sphere dimension, private actors exchange personal services and exert economic power. We describe the communication channels shared by private actors and public library systems, identify signals associated with governance, influence, and legitimacy, and consider how these signals relate. This study explores the signal architectures of social life in public libraries.

The paper considers the European experience of the citizenship education developmentan important aspect of internal policy in the most countries. The education in question is considered to be the democratic citizenship training aimed at developing the loyal attitude to different value priorities in society, social responsibility, active citizenship position, awareness of democratic rights, capability of using and protecting them.The author looks at the transformation of citizenship education concept in the last three decades from the civics education (i.e. history, political science, law, etc.) to the democratic citizen education. The paper analyzes differ- ent approaches to citizenship education in several European countries including the post-soviet ones. It is emphasized that both in western and eastern Europe a lot of effort is made for spreading and supporting the education in question. The author recommends considering the foreign experience of integrating the democratic citizenship education into the state academic curricula at the primary, secondary and higher school levels.

The problem ofjustifying democracy arises when a society sees the need for cooperative, collective action. Collective action may be needed to solve coordination problems, public goods problems, Prisoner's Dilemmas, and other structural problems of human interaction or perhaps to realize common ideals of justice in concrete political institutions. Once the need for collective action is established, one must ask how the goals of a cooperative endeavor are to be secured. Cooperation requires that individuals, at least over a specified range of activity, pursue a joint strategy. To assure voluntary compliance in a joint venture, cooperation must be to each person's advantage. However, each person may have an incentive to induce others to cooperate and to defect from the joint strategy in the hope of enjoying the fruits of cooperation without incurring the opportunity costs of compliance. This is the essence of the Prisoner's Dilemma, and considerations of this sort suggest that if collective action is to succeed, policies or strategies formed collectively must be coercively enforceable. Coercion, however, requires justification. Because solving the problem of rational noncompliance requires that collective decisions be coercively enforceable, the rules by which collective decisions are reached require justification. Douglas Rae neatly puts the problem of justification that emerges when political solutions are coercively enforceable as follows: "Once a political community has decided which of its members are to participate directly in the making of collective policy, an important question remains: 'How many of them must agree before a policy is imposed on the community?"" This is essentially the question to which the principle of democratic rule provides an answer: by what process are collective decisions to be made? Answering Rae's question requires a normative framework. We could say that a procedure for making collective decisions is justified if and

Many contemporary democratic theorists now base their conceptions of democracy not on the value of citizen participation but on deliberation instead. This apparently slight shift in emphasis marks an important change in the critical project of democratic theory. Although participatory and deliberative democratic theory are in some ways similar, close readings of the recent work of a number of leftist deliberative democrats reveal not only fundamental criticisms of their participatory predecessors but a strikingly different assessment of the political world as well. Deliberative democrats strive to avoid the charge of utopianism so often leveled against participatory theorists; in doing so, however, they lose the power to distinguish critically between the potential for democracy and its realization. Deliberative democratic theory, therefore, should not be understood as a revision of the participatory project, but rather as an independent and, for now, underdeveloped theory of democracy.

Would democratic theory in its empirical and normative guises be in a better position without the theory of the deliberative public sphere? In this paper I explore recent theories of agonistic democracy that have answered this question in the affirmative. I question their assertionthat the theory of the public sphere should be abandoned in favor of a model of democratic politics based on political contestation. Furthermore, I explore one of the fundamental assumptionsat work in the debate about the theory of the public sphere’s status, namely the assumed opposition between consensus and contestation. Questioning the rigid nature of the opposition, I go on to argue that the deliberative theory of the public sphere actually facilitates the development of the agonistic approach to democratic theory and practice.

Beyond Mass Incarceration?

Personhood and legal status: reflections on the democratic rights of corporations Corporations can have rights but whether they should also have democratic rights depends among other things on whether they are the kind of entities to which the democratic ideal applies. This paper distinguishes four different conceptions of “the person” that can have democratic rights. According to one view, the only necessary condition is legal personality, whereas according to the other three views, democratic inclusion is conditioned also by personhood in the natural sense of the term. Though it is uncontroversial that corporations can be legal persons, it is plausible to ascribe personhood in the natural sense to corporations only if personhood is conceptualized exclusively in terms of moral agency. The conclusion of the paper is that corporations can meet the necessary conditions for democratic inclusion but that it is not yet clear in democratic theory exactly what these conditions are.

The teaching of citizenship might seem inappropriate for a political scientist. Such teaching is normative, it might be said, but political science is empirical. And, it might be added, citizenship is a parochial concern for the good of one's own country, whereas political science is based on a universal love of truth. These objections will have to be made more precise, even recast; but insofar as they suggest that good citizen and good political scientist may not be the same thing, they are perfectly reasonable.The distinction between empirical and normative, or fact and value (which cannot be explored theoretically here), means that a political scientist, as political scientist, cannot tell citizens whether citizenship is a good thing, or say that political science is a good thing and ought to be welcomed or tolerated by citizens. A political scientist might perhaps remark empirically, or half-empirically, that love of one's country animates the citizens as citizen and love of truth inspires the political scientist as political scientist. But instead of leading to conflict between citizens and political scientists and hence to a problem for political scientists, who must be both, this observation is made to yield a queer harmony between the two. It is thought that since political scientists cannot pronounce upon the worth of citizenship, they do not get in the way of citizens. Their work is neutral to that of citizens. Love of truth does not interfere with love of country because all loves, being “values,” are incommensurable. Thus, the methodology of the fact-value distinction provides a lefthanded endorsement of (at least democratic) citizenship.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the implementation of self-service at public libraries from the perspective of their users. The implementation of self-service is related to a diverse societal context including, for example, an overall digitalisation, budget constraints and political expectations on public libraries to contribute to marketing the local community.Design/methodology/approachSemi-structured interviews with users and observations have been undertaken at self-service libraries in the south of Sweden. The material is analysed by means of a theoretical framework consisting of previous critical LIS-research, Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis and Habermas’ theory of the colonisation of the life world.FindingsThe implementation of self-service is affecting the users’ library practices as well as their expectations on the library. These expectations are shaped by various and sometimes competing discourses.Social implicationsTo support public libraries’ role as democratic, public spheres, the complexity of the users’ understandings should be taken into consideration when implementing self-service.Originality/valueThe differing expectations articulated by the users, and the various discourses they can be related to, implicate a hegemonic struggle, corresponding to a changing view on public libraries.

The developing 'global' network of computers, popularly referred to as the net, has sparked enthusiastic claims that this new medium holds the potential to revolutionise democracy. Central to this rhetoric is the concept of cyberspace. This virtual meeting place, created by computer networks, enables public interaction and information sharing. It is seen as providing the basis for the revitalisation of the public sphere and democracy. This article explores this prospect in relation to the political economy of the medium's ownership and control. I argue that the net's democratic potential is being limited by the rapid colonisation of cyberspace by capital. As a result, more than universal access to the net will be required to fulfil its democratic promise. Spaces for deliberative interaction in cyberspace also need to be protected and enhanced. Yet, democratisation beyond cyberspace may not automatically follow. Researchers and policy makers must pay greater attention to the systemic impediments involved. This, I conclude, is prerequisite to realising the democratic potential of the net.

One of the significant topics within the realm of civil society is citizenship rights, the education of which to children is of great importance. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of citizenship education in nurturing citizens and its impact on political development. The method of this research is content and library analysis and is applied in purpose. Citizenship education and the nurturing of good citizens are policies that governments pursue today through the educational system. Citizenship rights consist of fundamental beliefs and information that learners must know and apply to be responsible and effective citizens in a democracy. Therefore, by studying the concepts of citizenship rights, students can become empowered in pursuing their individual and social rights and, with a correct understanding of citizenship rights and duties, can regulate their demands in society, and assess and monitor the government's behavior in providing and guaranteeing various citizenship rights to facilitate the realization of a rights-based, lawful society (civil society) and political development.

The public library has been, and still is, an open access institution. Social, economic, political and technological developments during the last decades have intensified the debate on the role of the public library. The accelerating trend towards the information society forces public libraries to revise their concepts. There will be a continuous need for professional librarians to provide the human interface between the individual and the technology. Even the adult education environment is undergoing radical change. There has been a dramatic growth in Open Learning modes in all kinds of environments. Libraries are increasingly responding to the needs. In the United Kingdom in 1992 a government report acknowledged the contribution made by public libraries and announced the policy of spreading the provision of open learning material. This report gave approval to develop schmemes in 90% of public libraries in England and Wales. Project evaluations have shown that libraries are very cost-effective agencies both for increasing the use of open learning materials and in stimuating the educational development of the learners

This is a really good book. Brettschneider’s When the State Speaks is both provocative and persuasive, resolving a stubborn conflict within democratic theory in a way many will initially reject, but which he argues for so effectively that, by the end, the controversial appears the commonsensical. The problem Brettschneider addresses is one with which we are all familiar. In democracies we believe in the right to free speech. We believe that this right is implied by the underlying principles of democracy, and believe that the exercise of this right is essential for democracy to function. We are presented with a conflict when some people use their right to free speech to advocate values that are contradictory to democracy: to argue that not everyone should be allowed to speak, to argue that not all citizens are equal, to argue that some people should be discriminated against for reasons of race, religion, sex, or other distinctions that, in a democracy, we hold to be irrelevant. The problem is that if we follow democratic principles and protect such speech effectively, it may lead to the curtailment of free speech and the loss of equality: protecting the democratic rights of those who oppose democracy can result in the weakening of democracy through general disrespect of democratic rights. There are two familiar, opposing strategies for dealing with this dilemma. One is to say that the right to free speech does not include speech that promotes antidemocratic values. Hate groups, for example, insofar as they proclaim that some people should receive unequal treatment in the public realm, should not be protected in the expression of their anti-democratic views. Theorists who hold this relatively intolerant position may argue that it should be illegal to express certain discriminatory opinions, and may approve of interfering with the expression of such unwelcome views even when that occurs in the private sphere. The contrasting position is that a democratic state should remain neutral about the content of speech: