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A theoretically orientated and empirically supported research is presented, exploring and developing possible relations between uses of the public library, according to the dimensions of the usage of documentary resources, of space and of the Internet, on one hand, and its representations, on the other.\nResorting to a qualitative approach, Michael Burawoy's extended case method was applied to the Library Almeida Garret in the city of Porto. The tools used to gather information were in-depth semi-structured interviews, analysis of children's drawings, observation, documentary analysis of official texts and photography. Several readers were interviewed, including non Internet-users, as well as managers, technical and front-office staff, and the architect.\nAs intermediate results, several users' profiles are presented and an explanation is advanced for the genesis and functioning of a tacit system for the regulation of conducts, especially as far as noise is concerned. As a final result, I conclude that there is no clearly disruptive "impact" induced by the Internet from the collected and analysed representations, which are related to recently registered changes in the reading practices: for some representational images the Internet reinforces the traditional image of the library as an encyclopaedic organization, as a set of diversified resources; for others, Internet use will contribute, on one hand, to their reinforcement, while, on the other hand, it updates and democratizes these representations through an opening to non-learned practices and by the affordance of recreational, communication or, yet, instrumental uses based on the Internet; in more extreme situations, when library and Internet are used as synonyms in the representational grammar, without this technology a library would, naturally, not make sense; but, in the opposite extreme, its popular and intensive use is not thought as being compatible with the image of an institution devoted to culture, here understood as learned culture, the terms being almost antonymic. Changes in the frequency and usage of the public library, are else associated, in a clear manner, to the emergence of new types of readers reflecting changes in the urban social composition of the city and in the ways of urban living. So I conclude that the library without Internet would not be so public, or that it would not exist at all in some people's views, and that the library finds a reinforcement as to what is, and may keep on being, precisely in the public provision of Internet access and in open, free, and, when necessary, personally supported, Internet services.
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