Policy and power: The role of the neighborhood library in the community and the forces that add to or detract from its efficacy

This dissertation explores the role of a neighborhood public library and its relationship with the people who utilize its public space. It also explores the relationship between the neighborhood library and the citywide library system (the citywide institution), whose policy defines and constrains many of the neighborhood library's characteristics. This study places the library system in a historical, political and economic perspective to better understand the policies that have developed which directly impact the state of the neighborhood library. Ethnographic methodology is employed to gain a better understanding of the people and internal culture of the library, as well as the effectiveness of the current policies and measurement patterns which affect the image and funding of the local library. This dissertation also explores the way in which policy produces inequity among different libraries throughout the citywide system in Philadelphia, which can be the result of social and political distance between central library power structure and the local context. Distance is a common characteristic of all centralized bureaucracies, and in this case study is expressed by lack of awareness of local issues, class disparities among local communities, and cultural and class disparities between the central administration and the local community. This distance can be the result of the historical formation of the current library system, and insight into this process can also begin to explain the current debate as to whether a library should primarily be a lending institution, a community center, or a combination of both.