The aim of the thesis is to examine a number of librarians’ descriptions and opinions of what makerspace in public libraries is. The questions which will be answered are: How do the librarians in this study express and explain what makerspace is? In which ways can makerspace contribute to achieve the missions given to the public libraries, as directed in the library law, according to the librarians in this study? In which way can makerspace contribute to expand the mission of the public libraries, according to the librarians in this study? The material is derived from seven semi structured interviews, with essential personnel from makerspaces. Qualitative content analysis and the four spaces model by Henrik Jochumsen, Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Dorte Skot-Hansen. (2012) were used to analyse the interviews. The results show that makerspaces in public libraries look different all over the country. The local community shapes the makerspace, in ways of form, offer, activities, machines etc. Makerspace expand the traditional resources and offer of public libraries, by also offering digital participation. The new modern libraries with makerspace can be seen as something new and old. This because one might consider they are both. Makerspace is old in the traditional way of offering new knowledge to the public. It’s new in the way the knowledge is presented, instead of learning by reading you can now participate in activities or create and build things in order to learn how they work.  Makerspace can contribute to achieve the mission but not to expand it.

In this master’s thesis we examine how the public libraries’ role and mission has been interpreted during the covid-19 pandemic and how the public libraries adapted to the situation. Public libraries are communal spaces meant for the public and according to the Swedish library law the public libraries should work especially towards a few specified prioritized target groups. Therefore, we also wanted to consider which groups needs that have been fulfilled or not, through the adjustments during the pandemic. The material of the study consists of interviews with 14 public library directors and 1 developer of public libraries services. We applied Fairclough’s framework for critical discourse analysis on our interview material. This framework was supplemented with Habermas term the public sphere and with the discourses about public libraries identified by Hedemark.  In the thesis we identified reasons and arguments for how the public libraries readjusted their library activities and prioritized services. We also identified which discourses about libraries were noticeable in the library directors’ descriptions of the libraries’ role during the pandemic. Several discourses about libraries identified by Hedemark were common in the material. We also found a discourse that had not been identified by previous research, which we named the social meeting place discourse. We interpreted the prevalence of this discourse about libraries, which focuses on the social aspect of the library as a meeting place, as an effect of the pandemic. Since the libraries have not been able to function as meeting places during the pandemic, this function has become more noticeable. The closing of the libraries as meeting places has affected all the library users but has affected the libraries work towards the prioritized groups the most. In some areas of Sweden the public libraries have replaced some of the meeting place functions with new digital services. These adaptions vary greatly between different counties, which has meant that people have had different access to library services depending on where they live.  This is a two years master's thesis in Library and information science.