Working Paper 1: Theories of Social Exclusion and The Public L

“Social exclusion” has increasingly taken over from terms like poverty and deprivation as a term for describing social division. The paper considers social exclusion, and the related term “social inclusion”, and its implications for the public library. It reviews the development of the concept of social exclusion and assesses its strengths and weaknesses as a way of describing social division. Here, it distinguishes between narrower and broader manifestations of the social exclusion idea, with the former suggesting targeted action and the latter a wider social project. The paper then identifies aspects of exclusion in the UK, and links these to the transition from an industrial to a claimed “information” society. The final part of the paper explores implications of the social exclusion debate for the public library, concluding that a wide range of policy initiatives will be needed for libraries to have a significant impact on poverty and inequality (April 1999).