The Public Library as Past Become Space
Abstract
I use Walter Benjamin’s historical materialism in The Arcades Project to critique contemporary notions related to the understanding of the public library as a place. My critical theoretical approach, grounded in historical research and Benjamin’s theories of modernity, highlights contemporary aspects of the public library and broadens and deepens our understanding of the library’s physical role, both within and outside its walls. My research is based on the concurrent yet divergent social and cultural development of modern public libraries and Benjamin’s symbolic shopping arcades. Like Benjamin with the arcade, I believe that the public library contains innovative potentiality, in its spaces, collections, and modes of circulation. While I work within the library and information science research area of “library as place”, my critical method stands in contrast to other library as place research, which often simply describes the physical and historical characteristics of library spaces or treats the presence of any library as beneficial. I contribute to library as place research by considering how the public library, like the arcade, is “a past become space” (Benjamin [1927] 1999a, 871). Individual chapters consider the suitability of The Arcades Project as a theoretical framework for library as place research, the parallel histories of the arcade and the public library as projects of modernity, the display of the public library and its items, the library as a site to experience empathy—bad or true—with objects, the public library as the living room of the community, and how library workers and patrons alike can experience true empathy with the library as place. Original findings include a reframing of the modern public library movement, a comprehensive praxis of library display, a unique synthesis of Benjamin’s writing on empathy, and a demonstration of the effectiveness of a Benjaminian literary montage.