COMMUNITY LIBRARIES AS THIRD PLACE

EXPERIENCES FROM REDE NACIONAL DE BIBLIOTECAS COMUNITÁRIAS (RNBC)

Abstract

In recent years, the community libraries of the Rede Nacional de Bibliotecas Comunitárias (RNBC) have consolidated themselves and become academic and practical references for various types of libraries. Located in the peripheries, they become places for reading, studying, and access to culture, but also spaces of safety, welcoming, guaranteeing human rights, access to information, and sociability. This article aims to investigate to what extent the experiences systematized by the RNBC present characteristics associated with the concept of the library as a third place, based on the logic of Oldenburg (1989), Elmborg (2006), Servet (2010), Aguglia (2025), among others. Using a qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive approach, it is based on document analysis, with the corpus of analysis consisting of the RNBC publications: Expedição Leituras (2018) and O Brasil que Lê (2018). The discussion explored the similarities between the concepts, starting from the idea of being open to the public, with the potential to be a political forum, the presence of public figures, proximity to people's homes, offering comfort and security, functioning as a space with laughter and carnival, and also as an anthropological space. The weaknesses manifest themselves as the potential structural precariousness of community libraries due to financial difficulties and potential community and management conflicts. It is concluded that Brazilian community libraries within the RNBC have not become third places of conviviality solely because of this theory, but that their actions are characterized by and have the potential to become such a third place, provided Brazilian public policies are guaranteed.