A number of sociological inquiries over the last twenty years have demonstrated the pertinence and usefulness of an ethnographic approach to studying the relationship between library users and professionals, between the users and the "objects" on offer at the library, and between people and the spaces created for them. the interactions observed in libraries show the social ties of class and gender which, reinforced by the effects of age and generational differences, drive social segmentation from within the library. despite the sequence of reforms that have changed the mission of french libraries since the 1980s, there remains a vast section of the french population that never steps foot in a library, even if one is located close to home or where they work or study. since physical inaccessibility is not the problem, what is? During a round table at the conference of the Association of French Librarians (ABF) in June 2017, the issue of the social inequalities that are created and amplified by the relationship between library staff and publics and between books and publics was identified as one of libraries' greatest challenges. librarians now admit that the "library apparatus" produces inequalities. it is an "apparatus" in the foucauldian sense, simultaneously a discourse, site and tool of power that aims to define, discipline and order knowledge; its structural characteristics themselves can deter the entrance of people unaccustomed to places of culture and thus favor their self-exclusion: imposing architecture, austere layout, minimalist decoration, coded displays and signs, majority female staff, and professional jargon are so many dimensions of a space that remains autoreferential and closed off. akin to schools in their link to written texts and established knowledge, libraries are socially-marked sites, expressions of separate territoriality within a neighborhood, city, or even a university campus. by proclaiming in every way and direction the absolute dominion of the written word, the library erects a silent but powerful boundary between those who master this realm of the word - absorbed as an aesthetic education more than it is learnt at school - and use it in their work, their free time, their culture, curiosity and emancipation, and those who dwell outside of the lettered, de facto socially-dominated world.
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