Cultural mediation and reading mediation as a social inclusion strategy: community libraries

Abstract

Libraries are social institutions responsible for spreading values that integrate the culture of nations and peoples, which presupposes the adoption of cultural mediation, in a broad concept and in restricted evocation, the mediation of reading. Despite the conceptual distinctions that characterizes the human civilization, cultural mediation is essential as an element educational to the dialogue of different audiences with new images and new visual codes of consumption followed in the contemporary world. Reading mediation incorporates multiple practices to attract and train readers. Both –cultural mediation and / or reading mediation – can / must be present in any type of library. In this case, the objective is to showcase the strength of the community library as an aggregating element in favor of information democratization and citizenship. In methodological terms, the text follows the line of qualitative research: its positions understand the complexity and the information obtained, without necessarily incorporating quantification. The results of discussions around concepts such as cultural action, cultural mediation and / or reading mediation reveal that the paths are wide and necessarily adaptable to the surrounding reality, which requires resilience from the librarian, such as their ability to adapt and revise their training professional as an actor and author of social changes.