This article depicts the crisis of public libraries, analyzing governmental influence in this issue and points out to the fact that libraries are gradually becoming extinct. Such analyses have been conducted in the State of Maranhão, Brazil, where politics are discontinuous, causing the extinction of most public libraries founded in the nineteen eighties. They were closed for good during the government of President Fernando Collor and President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, backed by the complicity of librarians and the omission of society, which is unaware of the social role of libraries.
State and public politics; cultural politics; public information politics; librarians; social function; public library of Maranhão