**please note that due to levels of covid-19 among the organising committee this event will take place online ** Those who booked for an in-person event have now been refunded, and will be sent the zoom link, or can re-register to receive the link through eventbrite.

How have libraries, through the annals of history, been experienced as particular spaces of sociability and practice? How did libraries contribute to fostering community? This theme is intended to provoke sustained reflection on the practices and experiences of stakeholders in libraries - including its members, library and information professionals, and the wider community in which they operated.

Schedule

10:20 Zoom Opens. Introductions and housekeeping.

10:30 Keynote

Katie Halsey: “The Favourite Spot for Beauty and Fashion”: Space and Sociability at the Leighton Library and the Chambers Circulating Library, 1815-1830

11:30 Break

11:45 Panel 1: Identity & Community

Katie Learmont: “First we shape our buildings and afterwards, our buildings shape us”: How the design of public libraries in the 20th century influenced library users’ behaviour

Michelle Johansen: 'Good Feeling and Brotherliness': social practice behind the public library desk c.1900

12:45 Break

13:30 Panel 2: Reimagining Spaces

Edwina Penge: The lost space of an early eighteenth-century ‘big house’ library

Thomas Kohlwein: Vienna 1884-1934: Stories of a library and its community

14:30 Final remarks and close

Space and Sociability in Library and Information History - LIHG Conference