Public Libraries Engaging Communities through Technology and Innovation: Insights from the Library Living Lab

ABSTRACT

Public libraries have proven for centuries to be infrastructures both stable enough as reference centers for access to knowledge yet plastic enough to respond to the social changes of the communities they serve. In these present times of transformation, during which digitalization and the intensive use of technologies are modifying the way in which knowledge is produced, public libraries are facing new and disruptive challenges. The emergence of certain innovation ecosystems within libraries, which place the community at the center of cocreation and codesign processes between different agents, has transformed some public libraries into encountering spaces. The Library Living Lab, in the Miquel Batllori Public Library of Sant Cugat del Vallès (Barcelona, Spain), is an expression of this systemic change. The following paper is a case study based on that sociotechnical infrastructure and analyzes, through two singular examples, how digital technologies can be drivers of social transformation when citizen engagement is placed at the center of innovation processes. The case study also provides insights into how public libraries may become key agents in fostering and strengthening social cohesion through situated, collective, and technology-based innovation practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Citizen engagement
• community building
• living labs
• public libraries
• boundary organizations

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oskar Hernández-Pérez

Oskar Hernández is a PhD candidate in Science and Technology Studies (STS) in the Department of Social Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. He holds a master’s degree in Knowledge and Information Society and previous degrees in Library and Information Science and Social Work. He has more than twelve years of work experience in libraries and almost ten years in the social field. His research focuses on citizen engagement, cocreation practices, and innovation processes on a participatory basis. His current work is focused on sociotechnical infrastructures of innovation emerging in library contexts, specifically living labs and open citizen-centered laboratories of innovation.

Fernando Vilariño

Fernando Vilariño is the Associate Director of the Computer Vision Centre and Associate Professor at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research interest is focused on image processing and machine learning, with a particular focus on novel paradigms for the transfer of computer vision-based technologies in the area of culture for the (re-) valorization of digital collections. He has implemented a model of living labs for the fast prototyping of novel products and services. He is the current president of the European Network of Living Labs.

Miquel Domènech

Miquel Domènech is Associate Professor in Social Psychology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. His research interests cohere broadly in the field of STS, with a special focus on the relationship between care and technology and on citizen participation in technoscientific issues.