On arches and stones, places and experiments: Public libraries and democratic society

<jats:p>Abstract This article discusses the role of public libraries under the new political and social dynamics of democratic societies. It assumes that the continuity and expansion of the democratization process lead society to demand an increasingly larger and more active participation in the public arena and in decision-making. In the landscape of a world in crisis, seeking spaces of participation and new forms of coexistence and fellowship seem insufficient. Formal cultural institutions are urged to dialogue with new, proactive players, and with the new loci of production, circulation and appropriation of culture in democratic societies. Flexibility and openness to the new social dynamics are a challenge that they must address. This article is an exploratory reflection and, as such, the essayistic form was chosen as a strategy that allows one to understand, by means of subjective perceptions grounded on the bibliography of various fields of the human sciences, the emblematic situations of an emerging context presenting knowledge in a way that keeps it open, so that it includes its own rectification and originates new cogitations.</jats:p>