The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine how librarians in a Swedish public library view and discuss mediation of fiction. The questions posed in this study are: How do the librarians want to work with mediation of fiction? What type of literature should be provided according to them? How do they express that they relate and should relate to their users? The theoretical starting-points are three categories extracted from Jofrid Karner Smidt’s doctor’s dissertation Mellom elite og publikum: the approach to users, strategies for mediation, and ideals for mediation. The empirical material was gathered through focus group interviews with librarians in a public library. This material was analyzed using the categories above. The results show that the librarians manifest a traditional view on mediation of fiction and the strategies used for mediation. The user group primarily discussed consists of readers of popular literature who are considered in need of help and guidance. The librarians have an ambition to improve the literary preferences of these users to what the librarians consider high quality literature. In contrast, they express a fear to be looked upon as condemning and therefore tend to suppress their personal literary views. The study poses questions about high versus low literary quality and whose needs should be addressed considering mediation of fiction. The result shows that the librarians focus solely on one of many user groups and therefore risk excluding other user groups. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to describe how librarians inSwedish public libraries use Facebook and Twitter in themediation of literature. Our study focus on the librarians’ role inthat process. The research questions are:• How do the librarians in this study regard mediation of literature through Facebook and/or Twitter in relation to othermediation strategies?• What goals and purposes do the librarians give in the selection of literature that they promote on Facebook and/or Twitter?• What do public librarians think about the future for mediation of literature through social media, how will it evolve?The methodology used was qualitative interviews. Six interviewswith librarians that work with mediation of literature throughFacebook and/or Twitter were conducted. The theoreticalframework used comes from Jofrid Karner Smidt’s theory of howpublic librarians view their mediation of literature. The conceptsused are mediation of literature due to public demand, activelyrecommending and informative mediation, and through dialogue.The results of the study show that, in relation to other mediationstrategies, librarians regard mediation through Facebook/Twitter asfast and easy, but the response from the users is often poor.Mediation through dialogue is thereby difficult to achieve. Theother two concepts – mediation of literature due to public demandand actively recommending and informative mediation – are bothto different extent supported by the informants. Speculating aboutthe future, librarians find it likely that mediation through socialmedia will focus more on the users and that dialogue will occur. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this master´s thesis is to study how some Swedish public libraries work with mediating poetry. I did a field study at Poesibazaren, which has been active since 2010, located at Stadsbiblioteket in Stockholm. I also did a minor study about the work with mediating poetry at Stadsbiblioteket in Uppsala. My research questions included: Which mediating strategies are used in Poesibazaren? Which mediating roles are used by the librarians? How does taste in literature affect the mediation? Which factors are important to be able to mediate poetry in a public library?            I used Jofrid Karner Smidts doctor´s thesis Mellom elite og publikum: litterär smak og litteraturformidling blant bibliotekarer i norske folkebibliotek as a theoretical outset. Karner Smidt uses theoretical concepts of Pierre Bourdieu, such as literary field, habitus and literary taste to analyze her results. I used Bourdieus theories as interpreted by Karner Smidt, because she has adapted them to the context of the public library and the librarians view on literature. The method used was qualitative interviews and an observation at a poetry program in Poesibazaren. I interviewed four persons, one is a poet, one is a librarian and an author, and two of them are librarians. The result of the study shows that the librarians have a literary taste that lean against the high, avant-garde literature, which was a different result from Karner Smidts study, where the librarians had a taste in the middle, between the low and the high literature. My result also showed that the librarians in Poesibazaren adapt the form of the poetry programs so that they can fit people who are curious about poetry but not have poetry-reading as a habit, which has to do with the library’s democratic mission. Important factors for mediating poetry is support from leaders, co-working with collegues and an interest in poetry. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.