Almost every village on Gozo, Malta’s second island, supports a library despite the small population of the island, the general decline in funding for libraries in western Europe and the detrimental effects of COVID-19 on public services. Public libraries are well-established in Malta and, due to the legacy of colonialism, are largely modelled on the British system. Based on multi-sited ethnographic research in Gozo’s public libraries, this paper explores the ways in which these spaces are used, who uses them and to what extent they are changing or remaining stagnant. While some individual librarians were making innovations to attract more borrowers and update the image of the public library service, many libraries conformed to the stereotype of a quiet, shabby room that only interested a few loyal borrowers. The paper draws out the tensions between Gozitan librarians’ claims that libraries are well-used and appreciated and the observable lack of patrons during much of the fieldwork. I conclude that public libraries on Gozo are essentially parochial in nature and that while it is seen as important to have village libraries, many people are less interested in actually using them.
Although not mentioned in the abstract, there is a paragraph about romance fiction in the libraries:
Despite stocking a range of popular English-language authors such as Danielle Steele (an author of romantic fiction), Ian Rankin (a Scottish crime novelist) and James Patterson (who primarily writes thrillers/detective stories), not to mention extensive collections of formulaic Mills & Boone romance novels, Maltese libraries actually have their niche in their ability to provide Maltese-language books.
Romantic fiction in Maltese is immensely popular, especially with older patrons, and is hard to buy online. While Biggs’s (1973: 164) comment that ‘the majority of those over twenty-five using district libraries want only the romantic novel in Maltese’, is no longer strictly accurate, Maltese romantic fiction remains highly popular. One librarian observed that recent rebranding of Maltese books has caused even more borrowers to be interested in them, since the attractive new covers catch the eye. Through speaking to an experienced Maltese bookseller, I came to understand that the market for Maltese fiction is so small that there is little room for experimentation. Therefore, some authors choose to publish romance novels for which there is an expected audience, leaving readers to turn to English fiction for more variety. Librarians repeatedly said that most of their patrons were interested in Maltese romance novels or English thrillers/crime or women’s fiction. They gave priority to meeting those demands, in the expectation that doing so would consistently attract certain people to the libraries, rather than seeking to draw new audiences in with more innovative offerings. (749)
Here's the abstract:
Although not mentioned in the abstract, there is a paragraph about romance fiction in the libraries: