Abstract: This article highlights public libraries and seeks to apprehend the different relationships established by a given community with their spaces, services and collections, considering the indications of subalternity and representation formulated by authors linked to so-called subaltern studies. Thereby, it investigates the dynamics of representation of subalternized groups or individuals in the context of the Biblioteca Pública Municipal Ataliba Lago, located in the city of Divinópolis, Minas Gerais State. Therefore, the theoretical discussion recovers the propositions of the IFLA/UNESCO Public Library Manifesto and discusses the democratic dimension that must sustain the actions and functions of this library type. In methodological terms, this is a qualitative research centered on literature review and operationalized from a case-study. Data collection occurred through documentary research and semi-structured interviews with workers and managers linked to the Biblioteca Pública Municipal Ataliba Lago with the focus on evaluating whether, in its representational dimension, this institution speaks "by" or "about" certain subalternized audiences, as questioned by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak in Can the subaltern speak? It is demonstrated in the results that "Ataliba Lago" has privileged the maintenance of structural markers of subalternization and the production of a hegemonic discourse around the theme "representation" and the policies of democratization of culture, library and reading, serving differently distinct population groups of the city, which can be easily perceived from the approach of the concept of sociospatial segregation as a factor of subalternization.
Keywords:
public library; Biblioteca Pública Municipal Ataliba Lago; subaltern studies; representation; public place