The reading and information practices of the people who are part of the community library collective “Releitura-PE”

Abstract

It presents what the library, reading and information represent for the people who are part of the Releitura-PE collective, through the meaning attributed to their reading and informational practices. It uses bibliographic and exploratory research to show which community libraries are studied and to discuss what are reading and informational practices. As data collection instrument, it uses semi-structured interviews to collect testimonies from people who are part of these libraries, such as managers, educators, reading mediators and interactors, and analyzes and categorizes the narratives through of the Content Analysis technique, by Laurence Bardin. It exposes, in three categories of analysis, the forms of interaction with the library, the meanings of reading and the meanings of information of the members of Releitura-PE. It points out that the community library is a place of acquaintanceship where significant and rich reading and informational practices occur. As social equipment, they produce, encourage and share such practices in order to strengthen local community actions and expand the possibilities and opportunities of the people who live in them. It concludes that the meanings and the attribution of meaning given, by the subjects, to their reading and informational practices are reflected in their social actions, showing that the contextual, cultural and ideological interferences participate, in a dialectical way, in the way they read and inform themselves, as well as how they relate to the community library.