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A New Page?

A New Page?

Libraries, Austerity and the Shifting Boundaries of Civil Society

Public spaces, personal lives from University of Edinburgh

British Sociological Association Conference, April 2019 from University of Edinburgh I am providing a link here for my recent presentation at the British Sociological Association, in April 2019. In the presentations I talked about public libraries, austerity and homelessness. I was keen, of course, I highight that public libraries do far more than lend books. They […]

“To be a library in the modern sense, there needs to be a collection of books, clear access to the study material and a well-designed arrangement of seats and tables for readers. This last requirement implies a satisfactory level of light, a functional plan with a logical structure of bookstore, bookshelves, study space and corridors, […]

Overview This short paper (written in April 2018) provides an overview of my research in progress, setting out the research problem and questions, followed by a reflection on the proposed methodology. My research, as you are now familiar, is an exploration of the ‘public’ space of the public library. While the empirical ‘case’ is the […]

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE MAP  Following from my previous post on the number of public libraries, I am sharing a google map compiled used data on 513 public libraries in Scotland (note this list of libraries was compiled using data from public websites and informal conversations with staff in September 2018. These data do […]

At the start of this project one of the first pieces of information I wanted to look at was simply the number of public libraries in the UK. Figures from CIPFA (published by CIPFA in 2017) provide not only the numbers, but the extent of decline in the sector.The table above shows the number of […]

My journey to studying libraries was unexpected. For my doctorate I was exploring young people’s experiences of antisocial behaviour. Within the housing estate where my research was based, I was drawn to the public library, described locally as a hotspot for youth-related crime. It was a contested space in which young people’s behaviour was controlled […]

    A New Page? Libraries, Austerity and the Shifting Boundaries of Civil Society is a Leverhulme Trust project led by Dr Emma Davidson. This project focuses on public libraries and the things they do in, and for, the neighbourhoods in which they are based. Using case studies in Scotland and England, the study will look […]

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