The purpose of this paper is to explore branch librarians’ ideals for mediating fiction and their view on the literature that are distributed by the Swedish Arts council. The study is based on the following questions: How do branch librarians reflect about mediating fiction? How do they express their view and their work with literature that are distributed by the Swedish Arts council? And which ideals of mediating can be distinguished from these expressions? To answer these questions a qualitative examination based on interviews with four branch librarians where used. The empiric material where then analysed by Jofrid Karner Smidt’s theory about different ideals for mediating fiction. Smidt’s theory is published in her doctor’s dissertation Mellom elite og publikum. Following conclusions are drawn from the study: we saw that there are multiple ideals regarding how to mediate fiction and that these ideals often co-operate side by side of each other but conflicts do occur in some cases. The librarians have a positive view on the literature that is distributed by the Swedish Arts council and believes that the books contribute to a broad and high quality library collection. The librarians express a wish to increase the loans for these books by mediating or market them. We believe that a solution could be that the Swedish Arts council contributed not only with books but also with some marketing assistance to the libraries.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to study how librarians at public libraries make the literature with state supported distribution available through marketing. By qualitative interviews with nine heads of libraries the thesis examines how the library staff in each library market the state supported distribution by the Swedish Art Council. My theoretical framework is based on Philip Kotler's thesis on marketing. My conclusion is that the library staff rather market the library as whole, than focus on just one specific type of books. The attitudes toward the state supported distribution are a mixed one, but the library staff is glad for what is given.

The purpose of this study is to investigate librarian’s opinions concerning literature with state supported distribution and how to mediate and market these in the library. The types of mediation and marketing that have been studied are positioning, labeling and oral mediation.The study is qualitative with interviews at seven main public libraries in central Sweden. The respondents of the study were responsible for the literature with state supported distribution within the library.The study is based on a theoretical frame of reference containing theories from Jofrid Karner Smidt, regarding librarian’s mediation in libraries, and François Colbert’s theory on marketing planning for arts and culture.The results of our study showed that librarians have both positive and negative opinions when it comes to the literature with state supported distribution. They appreciate that the library receives new literature regularly and that it is literature that they would not buy for the library ordinarily. However, sometimes the literature from the state supported distribution is too niche for the users interests.Furthermore only two of the libraries in the study had a separate shelf for mediation of the literature with state supported distribution. The librarians themselves did not carry out any mediation effort or special marketing of the literature with state supported distribution, despite there being mediation operations for the rest of the libraries’ stock. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this study is to investigate librarians’ opinions about books supported by the government and delivered for free to the main public libraries in every community. The study is also investigating how the governmentally supported books affect the process of buying books for the public libraries and how the librarians think about quality and mediation in the acquisition. The analysis is based upon interviews with six librarians that are responsible for the purchasing at five main libraries in small communities in the South of Sweden. The results from the interviews are discussed and analyzed from the perspective of mediation. Two authors who focus on this theory are the Norwegians Jofrid Karner Smidt and Åse Kristine Tveit. Smidt has done her own investigation among the staff at Norwegian libraries and Tveit is presenting a model with four types of intermediary. Some of these types have been found in the results of this investigation. The interviews show that the librarians have very different opinions concerning the governmentally supported books, but no one is all positive or all negative. None of the respondents are very anxious to mediate a certain book or a certain type of books; their main concern is that people read in the first place. The main things that are affecting the decisions in the process of buying books are inquiries from the borrowers and the governmentally supported books are having very little influence in the process. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to study attitudes and standpoints among a few librarians towards literature with state supported distribution provided by the Swedish Arts Council. By qualitative interviews with librarians at five different public libraries, the thesis examines which attitudes that flourish concerning the titles, how the circular of books is treated, where the titles belong on the literature map and if the system is producing a standardisation of this literature and if the conception of quality is relevant. We also study how the librarians relate to intentions of the Swedish Art Council with the distributed titles and how they regard their availability. Our theoretical framework is based on Hans Hertel’s model of five literary circulations and Theodor W. Adorno’s thesis about the cultural industry and the standardisation of culture. The theories were used to put the state supported titles and the system in a larger context. Our conclusion is that it is a complex question with mixed emotions among the involved librarians. The attitudes are both positive and negative, and the incorporation of the distributed titles in the libraries collection of literature depends on which attitude they take. The state supported distribution system is also losing some of its legitimacy because of a broader selection of literature. The interviewed librarians mean that the selection made by the Swedish Arts Council is taken both from popular and quality literature. The librarians ask for more guidance from the Swedish Arts Council, publishing houses and authors in their work with those titles. / Uppsatsnivå: D