Public libraries, community resilience, and social capital

Abstract

Introduction: <br> The role of public libraries in contributing to the resilience of their local communities is an underdeveloped area of research. This paper introduces, explores and develops the concept of community resilience in a public library setting.<br> Analysis: <br> The paper opens the broader literature on community resilience and analyses the specific theme of public libraries and community resilience, focusing on examining social capital as an adaptive mechanism for community resilience and the role of public libraries in generating social capital. <br>Results:<br> The contribution of public libraries to specified community resilience and adaptive capacities in disaster recovery is documented in a small body of research. Social capital is an adaptive capacity that is applicable for engaging with endogenous disruptive events or exogenous shocks and are as such a general resilience adaptive capacity while also important for specified resilience adaptations pertaining to predictable disruptions. <br> Conclusion: <br>Public libraries are community institutions contributing to community resilience. There is a lack of empirical research on the wide range of adaptive processes by which public libraries potentially contribute to general resilience and to specified resilience. Especially the concepts of general resilience and information resilience seem promising in relation to the community role of public libraries.