Overview

Dear colleagues,

The Organizing Committee for the International Conference Public Libraries, cultural politics and reading - September 6 and 7, 2018, Casa dos Bicos, Fundação José Saramago (Lisbon) decided to extend the Registration deadline to September 3rd, 2018.

REGISTRATION SITE: https://www.ces.uc.pt/en/agenda-noticias/agenda-de-eventos/2018/bibliotecas-publicas-politicas-culturais-e-leitura/inscricao

We also ask that you pay the (symbolic) fee of € 20 upon registration.

The program is already available @: https://www.ces.uc.pt/en/agenda-noticias/agenda-de-eventos/2018/bibliotecas-publicas-politicas-culturais-e-leitura/programa

On behalf of the organisers and the scientific committee, we thank you for your preference.

Cultural politics have shaped the national and local realities of public libraries and public reading in different ways. Whether century-old institutions or dating from recent decades, libraries have been playing a relevant role in public services to populations, as places of culture, leisure, learning, information and conviviality.

We understand public reading within the framework of libraries, both as public institutions and as private entities purposed for public use, to comprise a diversity of practices and modes of reading, in any physical or digital medium.

In the most recent decade, economic and financial crises, changes in cultural politics and public services, and the diffusion of digital reading products altered the scenarios, the reading modes and the offer in public reading spaces. These changes occurred in local, national, and trans-border reading spaces in different ways, with different visibility and public awareness, from library closures to a continued expansion of reading networks, from drastic cuts in funding to discourses about success cases, from debates about soft censorship and surveillance to a harsh control over reading practices, acquisitions or access to digital media.
 

The Research Network

A moment of the meeting will be designed to create a network around these themes and others that may result from the debate.

The working languages will be Portuguese and Spanish; presentations in English can be negotiated with the organization.

The proposals will be assessed by the Scientific Committee to decide on its acceptance. The Committee will endeavour to publish the most relevant papers.t.

Deadlines 
• Abstracts submission: 25th June
• Acknowledgement of receipt:  30th June
• Proposals' acceptance:  20th  July
• Registration for presenters (€20): 20th to 28th July
• Registration for participants (€20): 30th July - 17th August 
• Programme: 6th August
 

Information | publiclibrariesconf2018@ces.uc.pt

Organization 
Sofya Aptekar, University of Massachusetts-Boston, Department of Sociology
Maria José Carvalho, Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra
Fernando Fontes, Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra
Nuno Miguel Medeiros, Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa/Instituto de História Contemporânea, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Paula Sequeiros, Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra

Sponsors:

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Photo by José Martín Ramírez (C) on Unsplash