The People's Palaces Public Libraries in the Information Society

Public libraries are, together with public broadcasting, the only publicly funded cultural institutions with a broad social reach, including to lower socioeconomic status groups and immigrants. However, over the first decades of the twenty-first century, public libraries seem to have reached a turning point. While their potential role as treasure troves of knowledge and guidance in a world of dwindling reading motivation among school-aged children, information overkill and ‘alternative facts’ is still needed, their societal relevance has been challenged while cut-backs have affected the physical presence and professional staffing of public libraries over the last five years. However, a new public library law tightening connections between the public library sector and the national library may provide new impulses. This chapter tracks the developments in Dutch public library policy and practices aimed at repositioning the library in the information age and ‘data economy’. It concludes by exploring how the evident public role of libraries can be made visible by developing new ways to measure the societal value of these people’s palaces.