Pathways to Wellbeing: Public Library Service in Rural Communities

To answer the question “If public libraries are a component of social wellbeing in rural communities, how are they successful?” we conducted, transcribed, coded, and analyzed 114 group and individual interviews with 202 people at eight field research sites in isolated rural communities distributed throughout the United States. Motivating this study is a gap in understanding the library service mechanisms involved at the community level which will yield beneficial social wellbeing outcomes. Through iterative phenomenological analysis, we established how rural residents defined social wellbeing for themselves and how they describe the library’s role in that context. We found that rural residents forego access to standard amenities for access to deep social connections, natural resources, and community cultures of freedom and mutual support. We found long term locally made structural, social, and cultural norms, which we call pathways, through which libraries support wellbeing.