A Call to Serve: Public Librarians and Social Change

Objective. Social change involves events affecting social, cultural, economic, political, and geographical contexts. Among others, public librarians play a crucial role in mediating this change by promoting literacy, reading, and combating misinformation. With this in mind, understanding the public librarians’ lived experiences and insights can further facilitate social change and enhance the librarianship field. The study aims to answer the question, of how public librarians understand and affect social change, based on the lived experiences of Filipino public librarians as information professionals. Methods. The Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) approach was used and a semi-structured interview was conducted to determine the perceptions of two Filipino public librarians on social change. Results. The paper showed that public librarians are motivated by their passion for community service. They also believe that education plays a role in social advancement and emphasized the importance of teaching literacy skills and providing learning resources to children. Conclusions. The paper concludes that these librarians perceive social change as helping people through their advocacies, information services, and library programs.