Libraries & Democracy

Democracy means citizens are systematically empowered to live free from domination by participating in their own governance. In a democracy we have freedom from interference, but more importantly we have freedom to co-create the structures governing our communities. This freedom depends on key institutional norms: free and fair elections, rule of law and due process, separation of powers, a free and independent media, and the protection of human rights including freedom of expression, association, religion, and privacy.

These democratic institutions can only be upheld by a robust civil society functioning as a check on those at the highest levels of power. To realize this ideal, citizens must have access to reliable information from multiple perspectives, the ability to gather and deliberate with fellow community members, equal opportunity to participate, and trust in government and one another.

Public libraries are the only institutions that guarantee all community members the tools to participate in civil society, and thus in democracy itself. They curate a knowledge commons that supports reflective engagement on democratic questions and provide the physical spaces where civic learning can occur, both independently and as a collective. Across the United State public libraries guarantee these opportunities to 96% of the population, making them more ubiquitous than McDonald’s or Starbucks. 

Yet despite the high levels of public trust and engagement libraries enjoy, despite their significant returns on investment in urban and rural communities, despite their demonstrated impact on community educational, economic, and health outcomes – public libraries receive some of the lowest levels of public investment compared with other government services, and are not well understood in public policy and administration frameworks.

The Libraries & Democracy Initiative aims to bridge the gap between public libraries' civic impact and their relative absence from public policy and leadership considerations. Through training and engaged scholarship, we aim to prepare students and practitioners to collaborate in leveraging and appropriately resourcing the libraries in their communities. This robust cross-sector collaboration can enable and deepen the critical work public libraries do to strengthen civic life, build bridges across difference, and build in community members the tools to navigate a complex information ecosystem. Our vision is to foster a new generation of public leaders prepared to take on the most urgent issues of our time using the most ubiquitous democratic infrastructure available: our public libraries.