Abstract
This paper proposes a publicness evaluation model for libraries (PEML) designed in the light of various theoretical approaches and models applied to public spaces. The PEML captures the multidimensional nature of publicness, because it embraces the concept of a vertical and a horizontal structure with geographical and non-geographical, material and non-material dimensions, for a comprehensive understanding. The PEML can be broken down into its component units, so it can be used for individual analysis of each of the ways in which a library is public: as a space, as a collective subject, and as an object of debate and representation. The PEML proposal is a milestone in library evaluation, because it is the first model of its kind and because it is conceived to evaluate all public access libraries, not just government-run libraries.
Introduction
As libraries continue to adapt to changing social needs, funding challenges, and the behavior of information in an age of artificial intelligence and digital transformation, they also “struggle to justify their existence in a world of 24/7 access increasingly evaluated by profit-based, commercial metrics” (Elmborg, 2011: 338). Assessing libraries as urban public spaces therefore becomes a vital issue, especially considering the discourse on the loss of true urban public spaces (De Magalhães and Freire Trigo, 2017; Langstraat and Van Melik, 2013). Libraries are “significant mediums of publicness in their own right, in that they serve as spaces of public communication and as transmitters of public culture” (Newman and Clarke, 2009: 109). The concept of publicness is crucial to a grasp of the role libraries play in society as public spaces.
Publicness is a fundamental attribute of physical spaces. Roughly put, the concept is that essential quality that makes public space public. It captures the nuances all along the spectrum from what is public to what is private, while at the same time linking aspects of the physical space (Lopes et al., 2020) with human interaction (Morshed et al., 2024). It has been used to assess the publicness of spaces like parks and plazas.
A means of measuring the publicness of public access libraries could help gain an understanding of libraries’ social value and lend visibility to aspects that can strengthen libraries as public spaces. But there is no simple answer to the question of how to measure the publicness of a library or how public libraries are. That problem calls for a multidimensional analysis that has to reflect accessibility, openness, inclusion, interaction with the library's public, design, and other features. Only a comprehensive focus can possibly, albeit imperfectly, apprehend the vital role that libraries play in the promotion of access to knowledge, in the strengthening of communities, and as a place to engage in public life, among other things.
Public space has been studied in a variety of research fields. Various models and toolsets for evaluating public space have been created as a result, revealing the diversity of perspectives that can be applied to the attributes of public space. Claudio De Magalhães (2010) claims that the attributes that can be used to measure publicness will inevitably vary, depending on the properties of the type of space in question. A model tailored to the specific characteristics of libraries is therefore needed, but no preexisting framework has been found. The literature contains papers that have used the concept of publicness in the library context from different viewpoints (Chang, 2023; Ciorli, 2018; Kim and Kim, 2023; Quinn and Ryan, 2022), but no specific applied model has been identified. The objective of this paper is to create a model for evaluating the publicness of libraries (PEML). The research questions are, first, what components and elements of libraries as public spaces ought to be considered in an evaluation of publicness and, second, what characteristics a model should have in order to represent a library's identified components comprehensively. The PEML proposed here is important, because it contributes to the corpus of library science theory and to the analysis of urban space. It can also help libraries demonstrate their social and economic value from other standpoints.
Methodology
The study is based on a non-exhaustive literature review. The keywords “publicness,” “public space,” “model,” “assessment” and “evaluation” were used to identify public space evaluation models and theories. The keywords “publicness” and “librar” were used as well to identify literature and models applicable to libraries. No language or publication date restrictions were added, and academic databases were used. To explore the elements that could be included in our model, we selected 31 models and tools. The selection was made in view of the need to capture the evolution of models (from 1974 to 2025) and the diversity of public spaces (urban spaces, landscape spaces, open and closed spaces, etc.). The models’ bibliographic references enabled us to corroborate the preselected literature on public space theories and conduct a secondary identification of other theories not retrieved in our searches. Most of the proposed model’s components were drawn from the interpretation of the selected theories presented in “Approaches to the Publicness of Public Space.”
Literature review
three macro dimensions of public space analysis: the human, the social, and the geographic.
Human dimension of space
The human dimension of space places people at the center of the process of designing and analyzing public spaces. Carr (1992) states that public spaces can cater to human needs, inasmuch as public spaces are the stage on which community life takes place. He feels that “there are pressing needs that public space can help people to satisfy, significant human rights that it can be shaped to define and protect, and special cultural meanings that it can best convey” (Carr, 1992: 3), and this he calls “the human dimension of public space.” He claims the three dimensions—needs, rights and meanings—are not usually factored into the creation of public spaces.
Carr (1992: 19–20) identifies democratic spaces, which protect the rights of user groups, significant spaces, which enable people to establish strong bonds with place, and receptive spaces, which must respond to five needs: comfort, relaxation, discovery, passive engagement, and active engagement.
In the 1970s Jan Gehl gave his students a list of 43 criteria for evaluating the quality of public spaces. He later streamlined the criteria into a checklist focusing on three main themes: protection, comfort, and enjoyment, and branching out into 12 criteria (Gehl, 2013). Gehl thus pioneered the effort to bring human scale back to public spaces (Dietrich and Erto, 2017). Dietrich and Erto (2017) asserted that Gehl's criteria were not a universal prescription to be strictly adhered to, since they were oriented toward design and overlooked some important social aspects. They therefore supplemented Gehl's checklist with a list of human needs created by Max-Neef, which “range from subsistence and protection to affection, understanding and participation and finally to leisure, creation, identity and freedom” (Dietrich and Erto, 2017: 275).
Social dimension of space
The social dimension focuses on understanding the relationship of societies with space, how spaces are produced and constructed, and how spaces in their turn influence human behavior and social interactions. The theory of the production of space was conceived by Lefebvre, and it argues that “space is a social product” (Lefebvre, 2013: 47). Lefebvre identified three realms of spatial reality, which are generally examined separately: physical space, mental space, and social space. He then proposed to knit the three realms into a single theory, “the production of space,” “with the ultimate purpose of describing and decodifying space” (Baringo Ezquerra, 2013: 123). According to Ghulyan's (2024) analysis, Lefebvre's theory is a significant framework for understanding the complex relationship between society and space, between social relations and spatial set-ups, and for grasping the way space works and is experienced “on different scales and levels as a mode of analysis for the spatial dimensions of human activities” (Ghulyan, 2024: 3).
On the basis of Lefebvre's triad of lived space, conceived space, and perceived space, the social production of space “describes how space is socially re-constructed, understanding resultant spatializations from a historical materialist perspective, and uncovers the history of space, facilitating the understanding of space's production through the interplay of material and not-material assemblages of conceived, lived, and perceived dimensions” (Ghulyan, 2024: 4). Low (2010) regards the social production and construction of space as social processes. “The materialist emphasis of the term social production is useful in defining the historical emergence and political/economic formation of urban space” (Low, 2010: 128). Low's conceptual framework homes in on the forces that produce space and the impact of space on social action (Low, 2017). The social construction of space furthermore focuses on “phenomenological and symbolic experience of space as mediated by social processes such as exchange, conflict, and control” (Low, 2010: 128), where the real transformation of space occurs through daily use of the physical environment and the social exchanges it hosts and on the basis of memories and images stemming from the physical environment (Low, 2010: 128).
Geographical dimension of space
The geographical dimension of public space refers to the physical and spatial characteristics defining the location and expanse of public space and the relationship of public space with the urban environment. This dimension includes aspects like shape, size, accessibility, connectivity with other spaces, the arrangement of urban elements inside the space, and the way in which those elements interact with human activities. “From a geographical perspective, ‘place’ means primarily two things: one's position in society and spatial location” (Hu and Chen, 2018: 1), and “is defined by a unique collection of qualities and characteristics that are registered with a particular geographic location, material form, and group of people” (Hu and Chen, 2018: 2). Geography lends depth to the spatial analysis debate, as it provides a single lens that gives a holistic view encompassing the physical aspect of the city plus the cultural aspect of the city as social construction (García García, 2011).
Approaches to the publicness of public space
Social theory and the social organization focus
Benn and Gaus (1983) suggest a framework for understanding public activity through a social focus. Their focus is based on three dimensions of social organization: access, referring to physical access to the space, activities, relationships, information, and resources; interest, referring to the beneficiaries of the specific actions performed in the space; and agency, referring to the status of agents, where the agent represents the person who controls the place. The dimensions generally work as follows: access refers to the right to access and use resources, information, activities, and spaces, but these things are regulated through the agency dimension. The agent manages the space with a view to its continuity over time and establishes the conditions for use and access that must be obeyed by the people for whom the space is intended, who are represented by the interest dimension. The interest dimension ushers in the question of for whom the space is intended, i.e. it is this dimension that represents “the public.”
The three dimensions can be usefully employed in empirical analyses of public spaces (Madanipour, 2003: 98). They give an idea of how publicness might be measured, so they make a good starting point (Németh and Schmidt, 2011), although overlapping between dimensions and ambiguities within dimensions have been pointed out (Madanipour, 2003; Németh and Schmidt, 2011). For Madanipour (2003) the three dimensions afford an approach to an ideal kind of public space, but they fail to describe all public spaces everywhere, although Benn and Gaus (1983) argue that the dimensions are by nature extremely general and can be found in all public spaces.
Theory of the creation of publics and the topographical and procedural approaches
According to Weintraub and Kumar (1997), there are two ways to contrast what is private with what is public: by comparing the hidden with the revealed and by comparing the individual with the collective. The first comparison frames the dichotomy in terms of what is concealed or withdrawn (private) vs. what is accessible, open, or revealed (public). The second considers what is individual or belongs to an individual vs. what is collective or affects a collectivity. On Weintraub and Kumar's conceptual vocabulary of public and private, Iveson (2007) comments that, when actions are described that take place “in public” or “in private,” public and private are understood as different contexts of action with different forms of “visibility;” and when actions are described that are carried out by “a/the public” or “in the public interest,” public is understood to refer to the “collectivity.” In this sense, a distinction is made between what is collective or affects the interests of a collective of individuals vs. what is individual or pertains to one individual only (Benn and Gaus, 1983; Weintraub and Kumar, 1997).
Iveson's (2007) approach is based on two kinds of perspectives toward understanding public space: topographical perspectives, which “use ‘public’ to denote spaces of sociability in the city where one's actions are visible to others” (Iveson, 2007: 17), and procedural perspectives, which “use ‘public’ to denote spaces where one may take part in collective discussions about common interests and issues” (Iveson, 2007: 17). Iveson's view is that a great deal of writing about the accessibility of urban space is based on a misconceptualization of the relationship between three dimensions of publicness, which are often regarded as equivalent, depending on the approach. The dimensions are:
publicness as a context for action (urban public space); publicness as a kind of action (public address); and publicness as a collective actor (a/the public) (Iveson, 2007: 8).
Topographical conceptions of public space wrongly see a direct equivalence among the three types of publicness. They distinguish only between public and private. Public space is presented as a physical thing that can be mapped, and it is perceived as the stage for representation and visibility in public. Therefore, this focus does a fine job of depicting publicness as a context for action (urban public space). The characteristics of public space as conceived in this focus are: it is conceived as a place that can be drawn on a map; it is conceived as a stage; it denotes visibility as a form of co-presence; it distinguishes between public and private; it concentrates on sociospatial rules about conduct and action; it does not consider public action or “the public,” it equates “being in public with being public in its collective sense” (Iveson, 2007: 17), as “to be part of the public is to be seen in public” (Iveson, 2007: 7); it concentrates on accessibility; and it holds that public spaces ought to be open to everyone, be inclusive, and enable sociability.
Procedural conceptions of public space, on the other hand, capture more dynamic, complex geographies; they cannot grasp what public and private mean for the topographical focus. The procedural focus is presented as a kind of physical proximity. Procedural conceptions distinguish the complex “publicness” geographies of public action and of “the public” that can flourish anywhere. As a result, the geography of the procedural approach is quite dynamic and complicated to map. Its main characteristics are these: public space is “put to use at a given time for collective action and debate” (Iveson, 2007: 3); public space is not necessarily geographical, but can be anywhere; public space is the space of appearance resulting from new communication technologies; the approach concentrates on public address and on the public as a collective; and it does not obey the conventional mapping of what is public and what is private. Procedural focuses point toward the geographical complexity of publicness in its different forms, i.e. as a context for action, as a type of action, and as a type of actor.
Political theory and the normative and non-normative approaches
For Benn and Gaus (1983), the concepts of publicness and privateness are not essentially descriptive, but instead necessarily presuppose that there are rules that separate—or try to separate—what is public from what is considered private. For Madanipour (2003: 204) normative means that public spaces are provided and managed by public authorities and are open to all. De Magalhães (2010: 4) says that there are a number of rights restricting or facilitating the use of spaces: the right of access, which includes the rules and mechanisms that regulate access to a place; the right of use, which includes rules, codes of behavior, and enforcement mechanisms; and the rights of control and ownership—“the rules and mechanisms through which a variety of stakes in a particular public space are recognised in its governance, and through which conflicts and disputes between different stakes can be solved” (De Magalhães, 2010: 4). Kingsbury and Maisley (2021: 354) argue that the “legal regulation apposite to infrastructures should be designed to account for, first, the existence of … multiple publics, and second, the aspiration to publicness in their relations.”
De Magalhães (2010) says that, if we consider the relative nature of publicness only (i.e. if we set aside the most normative elements), our expectation would be as follows: a public space guarantees relatively open access for most people and “allows them to use that space without other restrictions than those dictated by broadly accepted social norms of behaviour, and guarantees them some say over key decisions regarding the running of the space” (De Magalhães, 2010: 4). Zhu's (2023) interpretation of the normative approach to publicness and privateness is that the concepts are contradictory and clearly delimited, they treat public spaces as ideal places, and they see public space as a product that satisfies functional needs. The non-normative or deductive-interpretivist approach, however, sees space as a process interwoven with other urban development dynamics; it “essentially sees public and private as symbiotic and mutually constitutive rather than contradictory and clearly demarcated” (Zhu, 2023: 4).
Theory of urban design and the place-shaping continuum approach
Matthew Carmona (2014) represents urban design as a place-shaping continuum (PSC) made up of three stages: context (which includes history, the place's traditions, and the current political context); active place-shaping processes (design, development, use of the space, and management); and the power relationship (the set of power relationships among stakeholders). The first stage seeks to know the history and traditions of place and the contemporary polity; the second stage is split into two times, the time when the physical space is designed and developed to give shape to the material place, and the time of space use and management, which refers to the occupation, use, and administration of the space with a view to continuity over time; and the last stage is a panorama that can offer a lens for viewing power relationships that molds the creation of the public space.
Social theory and theory of urban design, the multilayer publicness and extended place-shaping continuum approaches
Zhu (2023) proposes an extended place-shaping continuum (EPSC) in which Carmona's (2014) continuum is tweaked by the addition of what Low (2017) has to say about the social production and construction of space. The PSC's analysis of public space is thus equipped with an extra dimension dealing with the meaning of space. Zhu does this because she feels the PSC furnishes a useful framework for interpreting how space is shaped by various material and social processes, but when it is applied to the analysis of public space, it “has been criticized for not adequately considering how the publicness of public space is challenged in the entire place-shaping process” (Zhu, 2023: 5).
Accordingly, Zhu brings in Low's debate on various approaches to the spatialization of culture, incorporating the two-pronged process of the social production and social construction of space. The social production of space involves elements “that result, or seek to result, in the physical creation of the material setting” (Low, 2010: 127), and the social construction of space refers to the transformation of space from the standpoint of phenomenological and symbolic experience with “social exchanges, memories, images, and daily use of the material setting” (Low, 2010: 128). By incorporating them as material and non-material processes that shape public space and publicness, Zhu is looking for nuanced ways in which public space and diverse levels of publicness of space can be created.
Analysis of the PSC provides elements for the social production of public space, and adding the narrative of media provides the elements for the social construction of public space from a non-material perspective, but both perspectives give rise to the shaping of public space. Zhu (2023) identifies different qualities belonging to public space, qualities that both exhibit the different forms in which space exists as public space and respond to the public's needs. As a result, there is a multiplicity of layers of publicness. Localized publicness is addressed by most of the models found in the literature, “for describing to what extent a geographically defined site is public or not” (Zhu, 2022: 9). Localized publicness also factors in how space is made available for a variety of sometimes-conflicting uses by heterogeneous users, as access is not always equal for everyone. Procedural publicness “simply means opening up the decision-making process of making public spaces so that deciding the physical forms and meanings of the space becomes possible for more stakeholders” (Zhu, 2022: 10), primarily stakeholders who have been excluded from the process. Symbolic publicness embraces localized and procedural publicness. It can be produced through materiality (localized and procedural materiality) and through the discourse associated with public space as a symbol of social values that justify how the resulting space is produced and constructed (Zhu, 2023).
Through these layers, we find that publicness “is not a preexisting quality but is shaped by the specific urban context and stakeholder dynamics” (Zhu, 2023: 16). This point is key for analyzing libraries.
Theory of publics and the forms of library publicness approach
The theory of the shaping of publics proposed by Iveson (2007) lays out the social imaginaries for the creation of publics. The framework of reflection seeks to broaden the analysis by decoupling the city from its almost exclusive role as a space for gathering and being together, on the basis of three related focuses, where “cities play a part in the formation and interaction of public social imaginaries – as venues of public address, as objects of public debate and connection, and as collective subjects” (Iveson, 2007: 21). On the basis of this theory, Esquivel Carreón and Marzal García-Quismondo (2026) switch out cities for libraries and stipulate that public access libraries can be public in three ways, three forms through which they shape their publicness. The most obvious form is that of a public space, the medium where public actions, relationships, and social practices take place using the space's infrastructure. Each library molds these actions and relationships into a particular shape through its physical design, its way of managing space, and the particular use to which it is put. The second form is as an object of public debate. This refers to public discussion and representation of a library's affairs and problems, mainly issues related with the performance of its mission, its value, the library-using public, and the library staff. Lastly, and the least evident form, is as a collective subject that is embodied in the voices of the institutions that vest libraries with their legal standing and rules, in the library staff who voice the values of the library inside and outside the established limits, and in the community itself when it becomes an agent that struggles to make the library respond to its interests.
Results
Publicness evaluation model for libraries
To capture the complexity and multidimensionality of publicness, the PEML is conceived as a multidisciplinary, multidimensional model that rests on several of the theories and approaches presented above. It draws inspiration from reflections on Zhu's (2023) extended place-shaping continuum, Iveson's (2007) theory of publics, and Esquivel Carreón and Marzal García-Quismondo’s (2026) work on forms of library publicness. The model inclines toward the geographical and social dimension of spaces. In the geographical dimension, it addresses the geographical complexity of publicness, as it incorporates the topographical and procedural approaches that see public space as a context for action, type of action, and type of actor (Iveson, 2007). It deals with the social dimension of spaces by incorporating the dual process of the production and construction of public space, which envisions the materialness and the non-materialness of public space.
The PEML is conceived as a continuous, non-discrete, integrated process. It spans context, publicness-shaping processes, process outcomes, and the meaning of libraries, which are the elements that produce and construct a library as a public space (see Figure 1). The model is not designed to be flat, but to have verticality and horizontality. Horizontally, the model recognizes two paths or highways. Their starting point is the two dichotomies of the public/private distinction as phrased by Weintraub and Kumar (1997): the hidden vs. the revealed and the individual vs. the collective. Thus, each highway takes either the topographical or the procedural approach. In the topographical approach, the library is recognized as a public space, prioritizing its form as a space designed to be public. The only way this approach recognizes that the library can be public is through the physicality of its space. The procedural approach, on the other hand, visualizes other forms of library publicness, forms that go beyond space, so it expands the geography of publicness. Both approaches are molded “by norms which continue to invoke spatialized distinctions between ‘public’ and ‘private’” (Iveson, 2007: 14). At the end of the highways appear the three forms in which the library is public: as a public space or stage for action in the topographical approach, and as a collective subject or actor and as a form of action or object of debate and representation in the procedural approach.
Publicness Evaluation Model for Libraries (PEML).
The model features a level of material analysis, which includes the way space is produced through its context (history and traditions of place, contemporary polity) and a process (aspects of design, use, management), where there are always power relationships (ways of negotiating changes to the space). The derivatives of these processes generate a form of library publicness and certain specific attributes that define the library as public. At this level it is recognized that each library has a different material structure; each library affords different possibilities and opportunities for public action. For this reason the model seeks to learn how the library's materiality is made and remade and what the consequences are, both for forms of public action (public address) and for publics. The elements of the process are the three dimensions that the two highways traverse, because the highways are the forms that consciously or unconsciously change spaces: here is where the index of attributes to be measured comes in, where the model is operationalized. At the end of the highways, we arrive at the three forms of library publicness and how the library shapes its publicness. A non-material analysis level is included as well, which finds the meaning of the library for its public, giving rise to the construction of the space. Together the material and non-material levels comprehensively shape the publicness of the library.
Vertically there are three layers or levels of publicness: localized, procedural, and symbolic. The first layer, localized publicness, incorporates the analysis of the first highway, where the library is treated as a physical space, a stage for public action. The second layer, procedural publicness, covers processes of participation in projects/actions to adjust the library to meet certain specific needs of its community or a set of images created to symbolize those needs. This layer incorporates the analysis of the library as collective subject and object of debate, from the second highway. The third layer of publicness, symbolic publicness, considers the narratives that the public has constructed about the library to justify its existence and continuity. In a way this layer contains the first and second layers of publicness, which point the way to how the material space of libraries is made and remade (Zhu, 2023). In order to analyze the model, we begin with the three ways the library is public, as a public space (medium), as a collective subject, and as an object of debate and representation, because this helps determine the evaluation criteria we can use, while at the same time it enables us to conduct partial analyses if we do not wish to apply the full model.
The library as public space
Taking the topographical approach, our analysis travels along the first analysis highway, where we assess the library's own level of response as a workable public space. The library is visualized as the medium (infrastructure) where public action takes place through the public and the library staff. The starting point is “the hidden vs. the revealed”; this means that this path suggests that, the less hidden the space is, the more publicness it generates. Here the hidden and the revealed must be compared more closely with the public/private dichotomy. Therefore, at the end of the highway, public space is seen as a stage for visibility and representation of the library's inhabitants, where the presence of one person is visible to others and public address can take place.
This highway runs through three dimensions: physical design, which refers to the aspects embodying the form in which the library is presented for use and enjoyment, i.e. the physiognomy delivered to the public; use, the conscious and unconscious natural processes of use that mold the dynamics of the place and make it a public space; and management, which refers to how the place is controlled in response to the interests that mold the dynamics of the place and modify the public space. On the basis of these processes, the library shapes its publicness, which is delivered as: access and accessibility, i.e. the degree to which the library offers universal access and is physically, visually, and virtually accessible; safety and comfort, i.e. the degree to which the library is a nice place to be; inclusion and neutrality, i.e. the degree to which participation by diverse groups of people is encouraged; and meeting and interaction (Esquivel Carreón and Marzal García-Quismondo, 2026). All of these things indicate how libraries facilitate or hamper social interaction, community building, and the formation of social networks (see Figure 2).
The library as public space (publicness as a context for action).
The library as collective subject
Taking the procedural approach, analysis travels along the second highway, where actions are carried out by “a/the public.” Therefore, publicness is evaluated as a collective actor/type of actor. The collective subject represents or seeks to represent “the public,” which is heterogeneous and diverse and is understood as the social totality. Thus, “those who claim to act in the public interest are thereby claiming that their own particular interests and values are universal” (Iveson, 2007: 40). The collective subject is embodied in: (1) the community as a collective agent, which strives to influence the library's decisions so the library will respond to the community's needs; (2) library staff as the library's voice, with ways of acting and defending the community's interests, rights, and needs; and (3) institutions, which legitimize, regulate, and defend the interests of society, libraries, and library staff (see Figure 3).
Library as a collective subject (publicness as a collective actor/type of actor).
The starting point of the path is “the individual vs. the collective.” In other words, the point is to see if the actions of the collective subject in shaping the library's publicness come closer to what is collective than what is individual. For this reason, at the end of the highway, the library is seen as a space for being together, for propinquity, for collectivity, and for appearing before others. This highway too is crossed by the three dimensions of design, use, and management as processes that consciously or unconsciously modify public space, because the collective subject is made up of public space. Therefore, these dimensions influence the position of the collective subject; that is, the collective subject is made up of public space, and at the same time the public space constitutes the collective subject (see Figure 3).
The library as object of debate and representation
Taking the procedural approach, our analysis travels along the second highway, where publicness is evaluated as a type of action. Here expectations that seek to redefine the possibilities the library offers are publicly challenged and reformulated, and the library is viewed as an object of representation and public debate on the basis of the collective view of the library or the community's ideals. Actions are carried out “in the public interest,” from the different angles from which the library is perceived, used, and questioned in today's society. In the library-as-object-of-debate, attention is placed on public discussions about the library. In the library-as-object-of-representation, the goal is to find the forms in which the library has been constructed in the collective imagination, knowing that these forms are not the object in themselves, but a constructed idea (Álvarez Zapata et al., 2009: 208). The starting point of this path is also “the individual vs. the collective” as the focus for addressing the library's publicness. At the end of the highway, public space is seen as a space for collectivity and appearance before others. Like the others, this highway crosses the three dimensions of design, use, and management, since discussions and representations concerning the library also affect and are affected by these dimensions.
Forms of action are rendered visible through debates and public movements (publications, meetings, presentations, etc.), strategic alliances with other organizations (to increase the scope and visibility of libraries), and artistic and public performances (visual, theatrical, or audiovisual) that promote a public image of the library. The model examines these forms of action to determine if, in shaping the library's publicness, they refer more to the collective than to the individual (see Figure 4).
Library as an object of debate and representation (publicness as a type of action).
Discussion of results
When multidimensional models are created, many possibilities are created also, as noted in the dynamic model (Fain, 2004: 17). It is a fact, though, and one not to be overlooked, that if different categories are combined unthinkingly or haphazardly, the result is likely to be confusing or even nonsensical (Weintraub and Kumar, 1997: 3). Therefore, to find a path to a clear appreciation of the multidimensional nature of publicness on the basis of the theories and approaches discussed here, and one that will help us arrive at a well-thought-out model, we used the dynamics mapped by Newman and Clarke (2009). Newman and Clarke drew on three concepts to organize the literature and fashion their arguments on publicness into dominant blocs: ambiguity, as the way of marking the different conjunctural possibilities inherent in the reconfiguration of publicness and public services; articulation, to identify the formation and mobilization of discursive and political connections into dominant blocs (i.e. the way in which publicness language is recruited to and positioned in different chains of meaning confers new associations upon it); and assemblage, to refer to the diverse elements that can be mobilized, combined, or made effective or ineffective, considering the dual dynamic that emerges from the fact that what can be assembled can be disassembled, and so connections are there to be made and unmade. Here how ideas are gathered and combined is important.
For the design of the PEML, articulation indicates the way in which publicness chains have been formed using the topographical and procedural approaches, resulting in a specific meaning stemming from these associations. If publicness chains had been formed differently, the resulting meaning might differ. The various approaches for analyzing publicness have been gathered under the concept of assemblage, to create an outline for grasping the complexities of publicness and a structure for steering the analysis, factoring in the concept's multidimensional nature. This structure can be disassembled or dismantled so that analyses can be conducted from different viewpoints (see Figures 2–4). Ambiguity is implicit in the proposal of the PEML itself, because it embodies an attempt to find meaning in the complexity and multidimensionality of publicness in libraries, i.e. the PEML presented here is just one possibility among many others that could be articulated and assembled differently.
By using the topographical and procedural approaches in tandem, we can pinpoint not only aspects related with the physical features of the place (the topographical approach), but also aspects related with the public action that takes place in the physical features of the place on its behalf, through “a/the public” (the procedural approach). This is important, because, as Weintraub and Kumar (1997: 10) state, “the heart of ‘public’ life is a process of active participation in collective decision making,” yet the topographical approach ignores this entire realm of activity and problems. According to Iveson (2007), each approach captures a specific aspect of publicness in connection with space. Furthermore, the literature has overlooked the nature of the interactions between the two approaches. The PEML forces them to interact, for a joint analysis that affords a transversal comprehension of the elements of influence from the standpoint of the different actors (Lopes et al., 2020: 2), while rendering visible the three ways in which the library is public, beyond the walls that bound it as a physical public space, thus expanding the library's geography.
Zhu's (2023) EPSC perspective states that spaces draw their shape from multiple aspects and dynamics that reach beyond urban design. Spaces are molded by context and processes, which are elements of the place-shaping continuum, and the continuum rests on the fact that space is not shaped in discrete episodes, but instead places and their identities are constantly in the process of being produced (Iveson, 2007). Space shaping is a continuous process “from history to and through each of the place-shaping processes of today and on to tomorrow” (Carmona, 2014: 33). Incorporating this perspective makes the model's analysis dynamic and internally interactive, because, first, context helps us understand the broad reasons why a space remains as it is and how it is affected by the “complex socio-economic and political context within which it is shaped” (Carmona, 2015: 376). Second, the process (design, use, and management) gives us a knowledge of the specific daily actions of the library's physical configuration. The place-shaping process embraces all libraries, because all libraries have a configured design (whether designed and developed for them purposefully or not). Furthermore, “all public spaces, no matter how inclusive, democratic and open, require some form of management so that they can fulfil their various roles effectively” (De Magalhães and Carmona, 2009: 112). Combine this with the use with which actors help form the space, and we have a potential conflict of interests that sparks power relationships as well. Context analysis of one kind or another is defended by other authors, who consider that space also “is a sociohistorical construction that possesses a political nature, since it is crisscrossed by power relationships” (Capasso, 2016: 1). Moreover, well-founded historical research shows how public space “is tied into broader social, political and legal agendas” (Vigneswaran et al., 2017: 499).
Incorporating the dual process of space production and construction into the PEML not only complements the context stage, since it envisions that space is created historically and physically with time and use (Low, 2017: 6); it also enables a level of deep analysis of the library and its meaning, because it incorporates the notion that space too is created with bodies in movement, dreams and desires, social interaction, and a relationship with the environment (Low, 2017: 6), making space “an instrument and dimension of people's sociality” (Corsín Jiménez, 2003: 140). Given that social relationships are woven in libraries, and the very production of the library space is not understood by libraries themselves, although it is constantly happening (Quintero López, 2024), this dual process of space production and space construction adds a qualitative level of research, because it incorporates a material and non-material vision of space. This helps us explore the particular materiality of the different forms of the library through the process of space production, questioning “how this materiality is made and remade, and considering the consequences of this materiality for different forms of public address and for different publics” (Iveson, 2007: 12). It also helps us explore the non-material, on the basis of how space is constructed, so we can get to know the meanings of the space for its publics, considering that the non-material “refers to the transformation of space through language, social interaction, memory, representation, behavior and use into scenes and actions that convey meaning” (Low, 2017: 7).
Presenting Zhu's (2022, 2023) layers of publicness not only helps visualize how space is public from different levels; procedural and localized publicness also afford a glimpse into how to “‘make spaces public’ in a dual sense, by making them both the site of particular forms of being together as well as making them the target of public action and politics” (Vigneswaran et al., 2017: 498). When we factor in these layers of publicness, we can reassert that to be public is not to be in public (Iveson, 2007: 14), but that there are other processes that make space and people “public.” The PEML approach also uses the three ways in which the library is public proposed by Esquivel Carreón and Marzal García-Quismondo (2026), because their proposal enables us to envision the library beyond its own physical limits, beyond just being in public: as a public space, it is a stage for public action; as a collective subject, it is embodied in different subjects who act on the library; and, as an object of debate, it is publicly challenged to reformulate the expectations that rest on it (Iveson, 2007: 37). Thus, we can visualize the complexity, the permanent transformation, as Carmona's (2014) place-transforming continuum, which gives rise to the continuing production and construction of the library as public space (Low, 2017).
Conclusions
The model presented here is robust and complex to the eye, but one of its features is that it can be disassembled and analyzed piece by piece. Generally, the model can be read as follows: it begins with a context, which speaks to the history of the place and the contemporary polities that influence the library's current conditions. The context is connected to two highways. Each highway begins with an indication of the model's analytical course, “hidden vs. revealed” or “individual vs. collective.” Each highway runs through three dimensions, management, design, and use. These dimensions are the processes that consciously or unconsciously modify spaces. It is in these dimensions where the index of attributes to be measured is incorporated, where the model and its attributes are operationalized, thus determining how the library's publicness is shaped, with the three forms in which the library is public, and concluding at the end of the highways, and so the library becomes a stage for providing visibility, and propinquity becomes a reason for fostering collectivity and appearance. All this together produces the space. Here we find the entire material part of the library. Lastly, the model contains a section on the meaning of the library for its public, which is where the library space is constructed non-materially in people's minds. Together the material and non-material analyses reveal the overall level of publicness of the library, if we may put it that way, since while travelling the highways we will have also encountered other forms and layers of publicness.
Working on the basis of the theory of publics, it has proved useful for research purposes to combine the two geographical approaches to space (topographical and procedural), each of which on its own fails to capture the multidimensional origin of publicness. In addition, by factoring in the forms in which the library is presented as public (as medium, as subject, and as object), the extended place-shaping continuum (context, process: design, management, and use), and the material and non-material levels of analysis of space through the dual process of space production and construction, the model captures not just libraries’ physical environment and the social interaction that takes place there, but also the historical and symbolic conception of the library.
Through the categories of articulation, assemblage, and ambiguity, we have found a path of reflection for the model's configuration. The fusion of the different approaches to establish a fresh analytical outlook is justified under the categories of assemblage and articulation. In the category of ambiguity, the model recognizes that, while research approaches are attempts to find meaning under certain specific conditions, they can never arrive at the absolute truth, because “publicness assessment in different societies will differ from place to place, zone to zone, and area to area” (Morshed et al., 2024: 2). Even so, the model visualizes the complexity and multidimensionality of the concept of publicness.
This paper presents the first attempt to create a publicness evaluation model for libraries from a multidisciplinary, multidimensional stance. However, since the cross impact matrices of dimensions and variables are presented along with the questions to be answered, we must recognize as a limitation the fact that the measuring criteria for answering the analysis questions have yet to be created. This gap poses an opportunity for future research. Nevertheless, as the PEML stems from deep reflection, it constitutes a contribution to studies about public space and libraries, so it brings fresh insights to the discipline of library and information science.
Footnotes
Ethical approval and informed consent statements
This article does not contain any studies with human or animal participants.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.