IntroductionAs a result of the global economic turndown, many local and national governments are disinvesting in public libraries. In the United Kingdom, over four hundred public are threatened with closure (Chilton 2011). In the United States, according to a recent study by the American Library Association (ALA), in the last fiscal year (2009-2010) public in thirteen states were shut down permanently, funding was cut to public in twenty- four states, and many are cutting hours and staff(ALA 2010). In the developing world public were already chronically underfunded prior to the economic turndown (Azubuike 2003; Baker 2006; Wani 2006), and the funding situation for public is expected to worsen (Ajegbomogun and Okorie 2010).At a time of limited resources and budget cuts, why should individual states and international organizations strive to ensure that people have access to a public library? Library and Information Science (LIS) researchers have suggested a number of rationales for the existence of public libraries. These include, supporting democratic citizenship (Berry 2006; Byrne 2003; Ditzion 1947; Hafner and Sterling- Folker 1993; Kerslake and Kinell 1998), educating the public (McCabe 2001), encouraging literacy and life long learning (Byrne 2003; Line 2000), forging a national identity (Byrne 2003), preserving the past (Taylor 1982), creating social capital (Goulding 2004; Johnson 2010; Varheim et al. 2008), protecting the right to communicate (Birdsall 2005), promoting economic development (Glass, Clifford, and Harris 2000), and bridging the digital divide (Bishop et al. 2000). The public library is undoubtedly a thing for all these and many more reasons. However, in a world of limited resources not all good things can be supplied by governments.It is not clear that the above rationales provide a sufficiently rigorous for public (Sturges and Gastiner 2010). Take, for example, one of the most prominent arguments in the literature-the argument from democracy. Certainly democracy is an important value, and do much to promote and enhance democratic citizenship (Hafner and Sterling- Folker 1993). Nevertheless, this rationale for the public library is too narrow. First, the democracy rationale offers no support for the existence of public in non- democratic societies. Given that such countries are frequently underdeveloped (Przeworski et al. 2000), their citizens arguably have an even greater need for access to the sorts of information services provided by public (Baker 2006). Second, even limiting the focus to democratic countries, enhancing democratic citizenship gives no reason to provide the services of to non- citizens. Third, even for citizens in democratic countries, this rationale does not justify many of the services offered by the public library today. Consider, for example, the increasing role of in helping people to find jobs. As the ALA reports, job- seeking resources are among the most critical and most in demand among the technology resources available in U.S. public libraries (2010, 3).1In this paper, I argue that there is a compelling case that states are obligated to create and fund public libraries, because access to a public library is a human right. The right to a public library is derived from the human right to information. 2 The human right to information access is a high priority right to a comprehensive range of information that the state has an obligation to provide. Public are proven effective institutions for securing the human right to information; thus, there is a human right to public libraries.3While this argument is easy to state, a full defense of it requires a number of steps. First, in order to clarify the claim that there is a human right to a public library, I start with a discussion of some key features of human rights. …