ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the transformation of the relationship between public and library has redefined the competence demands for library staff, thus exemplifying the skills required for facilitating the learning of a participatory public. It also discusses the skills of reflexive self-perception and informed opinion formation. The chapter focuses on selected articles and reports which describes the need for competence development in public libraries in Scandinavia. A. Giddens published his theory on how people had become subjected to post-traditional conditions that appeared increasingly changeable and uncertain. Giddens considered the individual's connection to lifestyle and its embedded actions and attitudes as a strategy to handle the increasing atomisation of social relationships. "Networked individualism" may be interpreted as a theory that re-integrates people in an alternative community understanding, based on new technological and new communicative possibilities. Sender-oriented dissemination activities were dominant in various forms until the 1960s, when a number of societal displacements took place.
