Dorte Skot-Hansen

The four spaces – a new model for the public library

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to present a model for the public library created by the authors.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is divided into three parts. The first part emphasizes considerations regarding todays focus on both the virtual and the physical library. The second part describes the four‐space model, including examples of libraries as illustrations of the different spaces and examples of how the model is being used in the Nordic library‐world. The third part pinpoints some critical questions in relation to the model.Findings – The paper shows how the four‐space model has been used in different ways in the Nordic countries since it was presented for the first time in a Danish report on public libraries in 2010.Practical implications – The four‐space model can be a useful tool in relation to developing, building, designing, arranging and rearranging public libraries. Furthermore the model can be a tool for management and communication in connection with library plans and policy and...

Nordic cultural policy

a Professor, Head of Centre for Cultural and Sports Studies, Telemark University College, Bø, Norway; b Professor, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland; c Head of Centre for Cultural Policy Studies, Royal School of Library and Information Science, Copenhagen, Denmark; d Professor, Swedish School of Library and Information Science, the University College of Borås, Borås, Sweden

The role of public libraries in culture‐led urban regeneration

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to present a research project on public libraries in urban development focusing on how libraries contribute to culture‐led urban regeneration as icons, placemakers and community vitalization.Design/methodology/approach – The research project is based on case studies of new “cutting‐edge” public libraries in Europe and North America. These case studies have been conducted through analysis of documents, observation and qualitative interviews with key informants.Findings – The article finds that new public libraries have re‐conceptualized their design, brand and functions as an answer to strategies of culture‐led urban regeneration, and at the same time they have actively contributed to urban development by changing the image and identity of urban places, contributing to urban diversity and addressing social and economic problems.Practical implications – The article provides a framework for development of strategies and legitimization for public libraries and a point ...

Danish cultural policy--from Monoculture towards Cultural Diversity

Abstract The discussion of the multicultural society has long been current in Danish social and educational policy, but it is only at the turn of the millennium that the issue has been placed on the agenda in a serious way in relation to the Danish national cultural policy. The transformation from a homogenous identity concept to the acceptance of a diversity of voices and interpretations is occurring only slowly in both the production and dissemination of art and culture. In the cultural policy discourse up through the 1980s there is an acute lack of discussion about the ethnic or multicultural. Far up into the 1990s, the cultural political contributions within the multicultural field are left to the social or humanitarian organs, with integration as the general goal. At the advent of the millennium we can identify greater openness and interest for the multicultural field. In the evaluation of The Ministry of Cultures Development Fund I have analysed the subsidized activities according to the strategies of ethnic revival , interculturalism and hybridisation , and in the article I discuss the problems of formulating criteria for artistic quality in an area new to members of the board. On this background I discuss the relation between multiculturalism and cultural diversity , where I find the concept of cultural diversity to be a better reflection of the new hybrid cultures, which not only transcend boundaries and traditional cultures but dissolve them and create new expressions across genres and cultural forms.

Towards Culture 3.0 – performative space in the public library

The aim of this article is to analyse and discuss the development of performative spaces in public libraries from a cultural policy perspective. First, a framework of three concepts of culture, 1.0–3.0, is used as a tool to analyse the overall development of public libraries. Against this background, we introduce the notion of performative spaces in public libraries by highlighting Nordic examples. The tendency can also be seen on a broader level in European and North American libraries, where a ‘performative turn’ can be seen as the relationship between the library and its users, especially the younger ‘digital natives’. The rationales behind the emergence of performative spaces in public libraries are analysed and discussed: democratisation, empowerment and economic impact. This article concludes that the performative spaces are legitimized by multiple rationales in the same way as cultural policies and cultural institutions are legitimised today.

Pierre Bourdieu, Alain Darbel and Dominique Schnapper, The love of art: European art museums and their public

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) is one of the most influential social scientists of our time. According to Social Science Citation Index he was the second most cited social researcher from his generation in 2006. He has also had a huge impact on cultural policy research, especially his concept of cultural capital: the total sum of our education and knowledge of ‘high’ culture. Here his book La distinction (1979) is mainly used as the example of his in-depth analysis of the correlation between social background, cultural capital and taste. But in my opinion the research that more than any of Bourdieu’s many publications shows the importance of cultural capital is his book The Love of Art: European Art Museums and their Public (with Alain Darbel and Dominique Schnapper) from 2007 (first published in France as L’amour de l’art: les musées d’art européens et leur public, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1966). This research is also a basic example of the combination of ongoing theoretical development and extensive empirical research characteristic of Bourdieu’s work. This research project covers 21 French art museums and 15 art museums from the rest of Europe. A total of 15,000 visitors where interviewed with the help of questionnaires, 250 visitors were interviewed during their visits and finally the researchers followed 700 visitors route through the museum and noted their comments on the works of art. And even then the authors complain that the research on account of the failing resources is ‘methodologically a compromise between the requirements of the ideal method and real life conditions’! The report shows – what today is an obvious fact – that the entrance to the world of art is a privilege of the educated classes: only 1% of the visitors were farmers and 4% workers, compared to 45% from the higher social levels – almost a complete reversed order of the groups relative representation in the population as such. The exciting and still relevant aspect of this book is that it goes far beyond the usual statistics on visitor attendance by mapping the visitors’ actual behaviour and showing how their conception of works of art is almost totally dependent on their educational level: the average time spent on a visit increases in proportion to the amount of education received, from 22 minutes for working-class visitor, to 35 minutes for middle-class