engleski

Potentials of Public Libraries as Heritage-based Tourism Products

Since tourism, due to its large size, in some destinations represents a threat to local culture and cultural identity, the planners of sustainable tourism development are faced with several different challenges. They must identify the potentials of cultural as well as public institutions and to devise ways of putting them into the function of tourism in order to contribute to the preservation and enhancement of local culture and identity. From mid-19th to early 21st century, libraries in tourism changed their roles and significance. Contemporary libraries as public institutions of culture with their informational, educational and cultural function are becoming a central meeting place for the local community, and the "community hub", but they are neglected in the tourist offer. Today, in light of social, economic, touristic, and ecological considerations in city planning, we can use libraries, on the one hand, to help local communities to improve their business, live better and participate together in achieving their goals, and, on the other hand, for the purpose of tourism as well as in order to familiarise tourists with local culture and identity. Therefore, in order to recognize libraries as tourist attractions and shape them into a tourist product, the paper analyses their potentials from the urban-architectural and librarian aspects: existing and planned locations, building characteristics, urban landscape integration, material use, library collections, library contents, modern technology in libraries and the library in tourism offer. The paper concludes that the potentials of libraries in the tourist offer are insufficiently recognized although they have great opportunities in tourism since tourists can get acquainted with the local culture and cultural identity of the destination.

tourism potentials of libraries, tourism, urban-architectural approach, librarian approach

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