Public libraries and social exclusion: the historical legacy

This paper reviews the history of attempts made by public libraries to develop services for the “disadvantaged” and socially excluded. It analyses in particular three models: the Victorian “working class” public library; the “welfare state” public library of the mid twentieth century and the “community” librarianship of the 1970s and 80s. Overall, it argues that the focus of public libraries on social inequality and division has been patchy and ambivalent and that action in this field has been hampered by a legacy of universal but passive service provision which has favoured the middle class. It concludes by noting, however, that the current context of rapid technological and cultural change provides an opportunity to reconfigure the service, and it urges that libraries prioritise the creation of a socially inclusive “information” society. (April 1999