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Studies young user reactions to the 1996 Linköping library fire which destroyed buildings and 150,000 books, and its consequences for education and democracy. Young people from the neighbourhood put up a “billboard for the freedom of speech” outside the library park and children, youths and grown ups attached their notes during the first weeks after the fire. Those notes have been analysed and interpreted as part of a research project studying the effects of the fire and the restoring work. This study aims to understand how young people reacted and expressed their feelings and thoughts regarding the library fire and the temporary break in access to library and information resources. Aims to understand and reveal the meaning the informants express regarding experiences, feelings, reflections and ideas in the situation in which they are acting, by looking for the informants’ own perspectives.

To show that the neo‐pragmatist position of Richard Rorty, when combined with a sociocultural perspective, provides library and information science (LIS) with a forceful epistemological tool.

Literature‐based conceptual analysis of: historical development of pragmatism in relation to other epistemological positions; neo‐pragmatism as a non‐dualist, both purpose and communication oriented, epistemology; and a sociocultural perspective within pedagogy, originated from the Russian researcher Lev Vygotsky.

Brought together, a neo‐pragmatist, sociocultural perspective contributes to a focus on people's actions through the use of linguistic and physical tools. As a tangible example of how neo‐pragmatism can be applied as an epistemological tool within LIS, information seeking seen as communicative participation is discussed. This article unites a perspective on information seeking as communicative participation with the neo‐pragmatist concepts of “tools” and “communities of justification”. The article is concluded by an assessment of neo‐pragmatism as an epistemological position within LIS, including those research issues that arise from this position and that are introduced along the way.

In its focus on usability, the neo‐pragmatist position provides a possible bridge between academic and other professional practices in the field of LIS.

Provides, through the means of neo‐pragmatism, an argument for the necessity of epistemological argumentation within LIS.