Public libraries want to contribute to an inclusive and innovative society and aim to enable their patrons to acquire the necessary 21st century skills. Dutch public libraries are therefore gradually adding more and more activities to their curriculum, teaching these different types of skills, such as ‘invention literacy’. They also often provide a ‘performative space’ (i.e. a makerspac…
This open access Pivot book is a comparative study of six early colonial public libraries in nineteenth-century Australia, South Africa, and Southeast Asia. Drawing on networked conceptualisations of empire, transnational frameworks, and ‘new imperial history’ paradigms that privilege imbricated colonial and metropolitan ‘intercultures’, it looks at the neglected role of public librarie…