Evolving legitimacy of the public library in the 21st century
| Date | 03 June 2024 |
| Pages | 1347-1366 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-02-2024-0028 |
| Published date | 03 June 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Library & information science,Records management & preservation,Document management,Classification & cataloguing,Information behaviour & retrieval,Collection building & management,Scholarly communications/publishing,Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance,Information management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
| Author | Motoko Yamagishi,Masanori Koizumi,Håkon Larsen |
Evolving legitimacy of the public
library in the 21st century
Motoko Yamagishi
Graduate School of Comprehensive Human Sciences, University of Tsukuba,
Ibaraki, Japan
Masanori Koizumi
Institute of Library, Information and Media Science, University of Tsukuba,
Ibaraki, Japan, and
H
akon Larsen
Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science,
Oslo Metropolitan University, Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this research is to comprehensively describe the legitimacy of the public library in
the 21st century.
Design/methodology/approach –The research involved a comprehensive literature review using the
Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database with keywords “Library”and “Legitimacy”,
combined with citation searches and additional collections. In total, we analysed 159 research articles primarily
from the 21st century, with some comparative analysis of pre-2,000 works. The final phase of the research
investigated libraries’legitimisation efforts across various dimensions, examining how they employ rhetoric
and theories to maintain legitimacy amidst challenging circumstances.
Findings –Through this research process, five dimensions of public library legitimacy emerged; (1)
Democracy, (2) Culture and History, (3) Communication and Education, (4) Economy and (5) Librarianship, with
the most diverse literature being related to democracy, and its subsections intellectual freedom, neutrality, the
public sphere, social justice and social capital.
Originality/value –The outcome of our results indicates that the evolving legitimacy of the public library in
the 21st century has become multifaceted, compared to the elements of legitimacy in the 20th century.
Contemporary public libraries can continue to utilise the dimensions of legitimacy identified in this study and
can reconstruct their legitimacy accordingly.
Keywords Public libraries, Legitimacy, Librarianship, Democracy, Neutrality, Intellectual freedom,
Intensive readings
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
In the late 19th century United States, during the formative period of modern public libraries,
there existed a welfare and educational discourse surrounding the raison d’^
etre and
legitimacy of public libraries (Whitehill, 1956). In 1886, Andrew Carnegie’s first donated
library in the United States was inaugurated in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, which he had
chosen as his adopted hometown (Bobinski, 1969). In the early 20th century, the philanthropic
initiatives of the Carnegie Foundation were pivotal to modern library development (Learned,
1924), and by the mid-20th century, the civil rights movement significantly influenced the
accessibility and utilisation of library ser vices to African Americans and minority
populations (Wiegand, 2011,2015). Also in Europe, notably in the United Kingdom and
across Nordic countries (Black, 1996,2000,2016;Harbo, 1997), a welfare and educational
discourse was surrounding the public library in the late 19th and early 20th century.
Journal of
Documentation
1347
Funding: This research was supported by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Grant-in-Aid
for Scientific Research(B) / 20H04479).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/0022-0418.htm
Received 4 February 2024
Revised 13 April 2024
Accepted 22 April 2024
Journal of Documentation
Vol. 80 No. 6, 2024
pp. 1347-1366
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0022-0418
DOI 10.1108/JD-02-2024-0028
At the end of the 20th century, Raber (1997) expressed that library legitimacy “...must be
established concretely and re-established as conditions changed”. Amidst the
transformations of the 20th century, the foundational purpose of public libraries and
librarianship was being critically examined by Raber, whose research covered the broad
range of elements related to public library legitimacy in the late 20th century. There have
been several studies of library legitimacy also in the 21st century, but these have not been
compiled to create an account of public library legitimacy.
The purpose of this research is to comprehensively describe the legitimacy of the public
library in the 21st century, based on an analysis of scholarly literature on the topic. We will also
draw comparisons with the 20th century, thereby revealing theevolution of legitimacy over time.
As a key term in the social sciences, legitimacy has been theorised by influential scholars
across political science, sociology, organisational studies and related disciplines and research
fields. A common definition of the concept in sociology is that “legitimacy”generally means
“the acceptance by those being governed that a given situation is just and valid”(Giddens and
Sutton, 2021, p. 962). Related to organisations, “Organizational legitimacy refers to the degree
of cultural support for an organization”(Meyer and Scott, 1983, p. 201, cited from Scott, 2014,
p. 72). Based on a review of organizational literature on legitimacy, Suchman presented an
influential definition of legitimacy as “a generalized perception or assumption that the actions
of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within some socially constructed system of
norms, values, beliefs, and definitions”(Suchman, 1995, p. 574). Applied to public libraries,
legitimacy refers to the degree of cultural support for the institution of public library as well
as specific library organisations, and further whether the actions of library managers and
staff are viewed as desirable, proper, or appropriate by the public they serve and the bodies
they rely on for funding. Managers and staff are thus seeking to achieve public library
legitimacy through their actions and practices.
2. Previous core research on public library legitimacy
Several dimensions of the library’s legitimacy until the end of the 20th century can be
detected in Raber’s works (1992,1997), such as the creation of a democratic culture, the
promotion of basic information literacy, library economy (notably effectiveness and
efficiency), and professional librarianship. Raber extensively addressed the professional
legitimisation of libraries in the 20th century by analysing the Public Library Inquiry led by
Leigh and other social scientists, which was underpinned by a Carnegie Corporation-funded
Social Science Research Council initiative. This inquiry was summarised in a condensed
report synthesising outcomes from nineteen special research projects. The inquiry
demonstrated that the efforts of librarians play an essential role in the creation and
maintenance of American democratic culture, providing empirical evidence that librarians,
and by extension public libraries, contribute to the public good (Berelson, 1949;Garceau,
1949;Leigh, 1994). However, although these elements have been identified as contributing to
library legitimacy, Raber did not explicitly describe them as such.
After the turn of the century, Usherwood (2007) illustrated challenges an d opportunities
facing public library services that seek to prioritise equity and promote excellence in their
services and collections. He did not explicitly use the term “legitimacy”, but we could see several
perspectives of the legitimacy of public libraries, such as democracy and education, although the
literature he cited was mostly from the 20th century or very early 21st century. Audunson et al.,
(2019b) havesurveyed librarians’perceptionregardinglegitimationof the role of publiclibraries
in the 21st century in six European countries. Although they found that the most important role
of public libraries is to be found in traditional services, public libraries are also essential in
ensuring that their patrons are well-informed and p articipating in their communities, and that
they function as key meeting places for public debate. Sørensen(2020) has conducted a literature
JD
80,6
1348
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