Cultural policy, the public sphere, and public libraries: a comparison of Norwegian, American, and Japanese models

ABSTRACT

This study compares cultural policy, public libraries, and the public sphere in Norway, the United States, and Japan. Results of the comparison indicate that Norway emphasizes physical meeting spaces and the public sphere. In Japan, there is more emphasis on the literary public sphere. Norway and Japan have strong centralized governance structures, which influence how public libraries function in the public sphere. In the US, cultural policy administration is more diffuse and local. There is not an explicit national cultural policy related to public libraries. In the US, legitimation of public libraries in the public sphere is strong and occurs locally. Public libraries in the US are used less as public sphere infrastructure and more for educational and recreation purposes. The results of this comparison are significant for understanding public libraries and the public sphere from an international cultural policy perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural policy
• public libraries
• public sphere
• governance
• legitimation

Acknowledgments

We thank the participants at our session at the 9^th Nordic Conference on Cultural Policy Research, Bifröst Iceland, for their helpful questions and comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael M. Widdersheim

Michael M. Widdersheim is an assistant professor in the School of Library and Information Management at Emporia State University, United States. His research draws from sociology, history, political science, and communication in order to understand cultural policy as it relates to information infrastructures such as libraries. He has published in Journal of Documentation, Library & Information Science Research, Libri, and Library Review. He can be reached at [email protected]. ORCID iD 0000-0001-7743-0605

Masanori Koizumi

Masanori Koizumi is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Library, Information and Media Science at the University of Tsukuba, Japan. His research focuses on how libraries or other similar institutions provide information resources and services to citizens, and how they solve social problems by using their resources in local communities. In particular, he examines those questions based on three levels, (1) Governance (public management and public sphere), (2) Libraries (strategic management), (3) Citizens (library users). He earned the Young Faculty Award at the University of Tsukuba in 2017 for his contributions to library management research, and, most recently in 2018, the Best Academic Book Award from Japan Society of Library and Information Science for his work ‘Inherent Strategies in Library Management’. He can be reached at [email protected].

Håkon Larsen

Håkon Larsen is a professor at the Department of Archivistics, Library and Information Science, Oslo Metropolitan University. He has published broadly within cultural sociology, cultural policy studies and library and information science. His most recent book is Performing Legitimacy: Studies in High Culture and the Public Sphere (Palgrave Macmillan). He can be reached at [email protected]. Twitter: @Hakon_Larsen. ORCID iD 0000-0002-7406-7991