The social weaving of a reading atmosphere

Discusses how public library readers in Almeida Garrett, Porto, create a reading atmosphere, focusing on meanings associated with aural conditions. Through a qualitative, single case study, ethnographic and interview techniques were applied. Readers’ actual practices and discourses, through a theoretical sample, and those of managers, staff and architect were analysed; a spatial analysis was undertook within the framework of social inequalities and power relations. Proposes the concept of reading atmosphere and suggests that its social production was based on a tacit, informal code of conduct in which some regular readers played an influential role. Makes some recommendations on service provision