Municipal Libraries and Library Documentation Centres: an Outline of a Typology of Services

Municipal libraries have engaged in relationships with the documentation centres of primary and junior schools since their creation. During the nineties, they have developed specific services at the core of the libraries or scholarly services for the municipality, beyond traditional episodic presentations, and have created the conditions for a continuing and durable cooperation. From the experiences of Vénissieux library and a professional meeting of "librarians or coordinators from documentation centres", a typology of services for documentation centres to restart or create them could be extracted. The ten principal missions of librarians privilege the axis of librarianship or that of cultural and educational programmes in a network of libraries. These orientations reveal two opposing conceptions of the documentation centres and of their partnerships with the lending centres.
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