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| The Public Library as a Cultural Center |
Public libraries serve to cultivate and convey cultural goods, guaranteeing all members of society irrespective of education, background and age access to cultural knowledge and cultural activities. They offer a wide range of different media and events on a regional and supra-regional basis. These services run the gamut from high culture to popular culture, encompassing literature as well as journals, audio-visual media and games. Liberaries thus propagate an open understanding of culture and promote a preoccupation with one's own cultural identity. On the one hand, public libraries preserve a cultural legacy while on the other, they disseminate new media. One of the library's main tasks continues to be providing literature. On a local level public libraries are the most important non-commercial providers of liberature. They allow children and adults to develop a pleasure-oriented access to book and media culture and support the development of reading skills and media competence. And this they have done with success. While generally the number of book readers in Austria has been on the decline, public libraries have posted a steadily growing number of readers.
The cultural mission of public libraries has assumed new dimensions as a result of the fast development of information and communication technologies and far-reaching global changes. Networking favors intercultural dialogue. Promoting this dialogue between cultures is an important task of public libraries - today more than ever.
As professional service centers public libaries disseminate cultural contents and cultural competences. Innovative methods of presentation and dissemination used in on-line services in particular open up new paths to cultural services and attract new target groups. This way the public library is able to become a modern place of encounter, a forum for events and a cultural space for the public.
Public libraries as
- professional service centers using state-of-the-art information and communication technologies are able to give all individuals access to a rich diversity of media and cultural activities
- the leading local provider of literature they see a pleasure-oriented promotion of reading skills and information on literature as one of their main tasks
- an institution promoting an intercultural dialogue by increased support of cooperation and cultural networks and opening up new paths to cultural contents in the realm of on-line services in particular by using innovative methods of presentation and dissemination.
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