| The legitimacy of an organization is based on its mission, i.e. its raison d'etre. Some libraries directors and many researchers fear that the legitimacy of public libraries is challenged in the information society. Moreover, official texts presenting the missions of public libraries are varied and the missions are deliberately not defined there. In Quebec, where a large majority of autonomous public libraries are directly under the supervision of municipalities, public libraries have to define and legitimate their missions with city councillors.;Using the theory of the social construction of reality, a conceptual framework is proposed not only to study the discourses in their textual dimension, but also to contextualize them and analyze the distance between them and the libraries' practices.;The research strategy adopted is that of the multiple case study. The aim is to develop an in-depth analysis of each case as well as a cross-case analysis. The twelve cases (municipalities) were selected according to two criteria of variation (size of the municipality and annual budget allocated by the municipality to the library) and a discriminant criterion (the distance from the Universite de Montreal). Interviews were conducted with the city councillors who chair the commissions or the committees on which the public libraries depend. These interviews and the municipal cultural policies were subjected to a discourse analysis. The interviews with the directors of the public libraries and documents were subjected to content analysis. This made possible the triangulation of methods and data sources.;Neither the city councillors in Quebec, nor the professionals have a homogenous discourse on the missions of public libraries. However, a model of discourse does emerge. It shows a "limited" discourse compared to the literature, in which a passive image of the library is presented and in which the tradition continues in spite of the context of the information society. But the analysis also revealed that the city councillors base their points of view on their own convictions as individuals, on their role in the management of the municipality as elected officials, and on the image they have of the users of public libraries. Finally, the analysis revealed an axis of differentiation of the points of view according to whether the discourse was based on fundamental values or on the (real or supposed) uses of the library.;The main objective of this research is to understand, via the discourses, the point of view of city councillors in Quebec on the missions of autonomous public libraries, compared to the libraries' practices in their communities.;Key-words: mission, public library, city councillor, Quebec, value, role, public, field of activity, ideational effect, discourse... |
