Understanding Digital Libraries as Open Spaces

Building on an ongoing case study of how readers navigate the corpus of BnF Gallica and on a nascent project at OpenEdition, I will venture an understanding of digital libraries as open spaces at the crossroads of political spaces—with their governance resulting in choices and hierarchization of content—, mediatic spaces—made of interfaces framing their structure and use—, and experiential spaces—appropriated by readers in practice. For example, the navigation of readers on Gallica is circumscribed within a large corpus of works in the public domain preserved for their patrimonial value, it is structured by a set of inherited taxonomies such as the cotation Clément or the Dewey Decimal Classification, and, finally, it is equipped with a single search engine and a dedicated online reader. As a consequence, actual reading practices hinge upon the articulation of these dimensions and the needs and habits of a great variety of audiences. Paying attention to the readers informational practices as they are shaped by policies, interfaces, and uses, such a spatial understanding of digital libraries sheds light on how readers actively inhabit such spaces, depending on the values they embody. Eventually, this perspective hints at ways to go beyond the mere extractivism of search engines in order to foster discoverability.