Public libraries, together with public broadcasting, are the only publicly funded cultural institutions with a broad social reach which includes groups of lower socioeconomic status and immigrants. Despite this crucial role they play, public libraries seem to have reached a turning point in the first decades of the twenty-first century. While they have a potential role as treasure troves of knowledge and guidance in a world of information overkill, ‘alternative facts’ and dwindling reading motivation among school-aged children, their societal relevance has been challenged, while cutbacks have affected the physical presence and professional staffing of public libraries over the last five years. However, a new public library law tightening the connections between the public library sector and the national library in the Netherlands may provide new impulses. This chapter tracks the developments in Dutch public library policy and the practices implemented by libraries to reposition themselves in the information age and ‘data economy’. It concludes by exploring how the public role of libraries can be made visible by developing new ways to measure the societal value of these people's palaces.

The Dutch Public Library Network in 2018

The public library network in the Netherlands is well over a century old. In 1908, the Central Association of Public Reading Rooms and Libraries was founded by six members from the cities of Groningen, Leeuwarden, Utrecht, Dordrecht, The Hague and Rotterdam. It was not before the 1960s and 1970s that public library services reached all corners of the country. Economic crises, reluctance from religious groups (both Roman Catholics and Protestants) and the Second World War were important obstacles to the expansion that was so greatly desired by proponents of the Reading Room Movement, which was more successful in other Western European countries such as England, Wales and Scotland (Black, Pepper & Bagshaw 2009, Schneiders 1990).

The most recent statistics available at the moment of writing (reflecting the situation in late 2016 to mid-2017) list some 150 public library organisations in the Netherlands that operate at approximately 770 main locations and fully fledged library branches. An additional 200 staffed access points with limited collections and 180 book collection points are scattered across the country. In total, 2.3 million children (0-17 years) and 1.4 million adults are registered as members.