Reading and public library: social perspectives discussing modernity

Abstract

This article is a reflection about the public libraries’ social function and the reading practices. It analyzes their relation with the instrumentalization of the rational thought and its incidence on social library speech. This article reflects the concept of civic responsibility on the frame of this instrumentalization, emphasizing the multilateral organizations dispositions to the library labor development in the Latin American countries. Finally, it suggests methods that will contribute to decrease the contradictory situation of the public library dominated by the tension between the basic management of social principles and the tendency that sometimes gain the social concepts in the public discussion.