Literary reading, public libraries, young people, and inclusive democracies

OPENLIB inquires into the claim that literary reading fosters more inclusive democracies by focusing on the shifting relationships between young people, cultural materials, and public libraries. The proposed project brings together the long-held question about the uses of literature and arts with the demand for libraries to ensure a pluralistic public sphere in times of increased digitalization. This project assumes that the question of how literary reading contributes to more inclusive democracies can only be pursued with methodological, conceptual, and cross-disciplinary innovation. OPENLIB deploys a childist inquiry combining digital humanities tools with arts-based participatory workshops engaging in an inquiry with ‘tweens’ aged 10 to 13. Zooming into and out of four European cities —Wroclaw, Aarhus, Glasgow and Barcelona—, OPENLIB is organised in four interrelated work packages. In the first, we trace adult understandings of the role of public libraries and literary reading; in the second, we inquire into the affective and critical repertoires of the most required materials by tweens using digital humanities tools; in the third, we involve children aged 10 to 13 as knowledge makers to produce new orders and reimaginations of their libraries by organising participatory and arts-based methods workshops; in the fourth, we stress an intersectoral and cross-disciplinary conversation to develop new concepts and objects of research at the crossroads of children’s literature studies, media studies, childhood studies, and library research. By combining insights from these diverse modes of inquiry, OPENLIB traces the affordances and challenges of advocating for literary reading for more inclusive democracies. The project offers a new conceptualisation of literary reading and its relationship with inclusive and exclusionary frameworks, as well as situated models and tools to reimagine public libraries as key devices for literary reading for inclusion.