Denna uppsats har till syfte att studera kampanjen ”Bibliotek mot rasism”som genomfördes i fyra olika biblioteksregioner i Sverige från 2014 till 2016. Med intervjuer som metod och inramningsteori som analytiskt verktyg har kampanjen kartlagts och studiens syfte är att se hur kampanjen utvecklades över tid och hur kampanjen kan ställas i relation till bibliotekens demokratiska uppdrag. Empirin för studien utgörs främst av intervjuer med två bibliotekarier och två bibliotekskonsulenter som var engagerade i arbetet kring kampanjen. Utöver detta kompletteras informanternas utsagor med kampanjdokument såsom manifest och interna styrdokument. Utifrån inramningsteorins begrepp kan kampanjens framväxt och utveckling förstås som en process. Med dessa begrepp som utgångspunkt kan det argumenteras för att en diskursförändring i samhället påverkade kampanjens så kallade åtgärdsramar medföljd att kampanjen bytte inriktning och sedan försvann från folkbiblioteken. Beroende vad som tolkas in i skrivelser att bibliotek ska vara neutrala syftar uppsatsen till att reda ut om kampanjen bör ses som politisk eller på annat sätt utanför bibliotekens uppdragsbeskrivning

The aim of the thesis is to examine the Swedish publiclibrary-debate between 1965 and 1975, with a focus on theinfluence of the New Left movement. The empirical materialconsists of articles from two library journals, and is studiedwith the intent to achieve knowledge of the library ideologyexpressed in context of the socialist movements of the 1960sand 70s. The method used is ideology analysis. Threedifferent areas of debate have been included in the study:issues pertaining to library holdings, problems concerning theworkplace and social and outreach activities.Some of the salient and key ideas that often recurs in thematerial touch upon the dangers of mass market literature, thenecessity for an expanded workplace democracy, theimportance of social work and the need for a more politicallyactive library. The bureaucracy, centralism and authoritariantendencies in the library world are criticized, as well as thenotion that the library should remain a politically neutralinstitution. The need to create a library that can serve as asanctuary from commercial forces is also underlined, as wellas the problem with bourgeois high culture alienating users.Overall the left-leaning debate tends to be formulatedpolemically, and reflect an ongoing generational conflict witha strong criticism of the library world’s upper hierarchy. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The study examines the recountings of the work of five librarians at four public libraries in smaller municipalities in southern Sweden with their assignment of national minorities. Reports have shown that there are shortcomings in many libraries with regard to the fulfillment of goals described in the Library Act’s writing about national minorities. The study aims to investigate what activities representatives of libraries recount they work with, how they reason about national minorities’ visibility in the library space and how they view the library’s minority policy role. The method used is semi-structured interviews. The material is analyzed thematically. The theory guiding the study is R. Audunson et. als theory of libraries as a meeting place and its ability to bridge gaps in society. In the librarians’ recountings it appears that they primarily work with libraries as being low intensive meeting places which includes collections, expositions and visibility in the library space. Some of them work with events that can be described as high intensive activities. The results of the study cautiously suggests that it may not be sufficient to solely serve as low intensive meeting places in same ways as before in order to break old traditions of not having prioritized national minorities in the past. The study contributes with descriptions of librairians’ experiences of and thoughts on the subject at a time when national minority policies are being raised and the results may provide insights on how additional incentives for public libraries can be designed.

The purpose of this study is to examine how immigrant authorsare mediated in texts. The study is based on three magazines which are directed towards the library sector. These texts have been published from the year 2000 to the year 2012. The study focuses on two of these magazines, namely Bibliotek i Samhälle and Biblioteksbladet. The study focuses on authors who write in the swedish language, but who still seem to be perceived as immigrant authors. The method used in this study is critical discourse analysis (CDA) according to Norman Fairclough. How the studied authors are being described are presented with quotations from the texts. These quotations are analysed from semantic relations. Further analysis displays first how immigrant authors are legitimated. Second it displays how immigrant authors are paraphrased in the texts. The results show that the texts focuses on the two authors Jonas Hassen Khemiri and Theodor Kallifatides. The texts paraphrasethe immigrant authors as participants of debates about the society,in a way that undermines the category of the immigrant author, aswell skilled in language and as public persons in book fairs. The final discussion stress that nothing indicates that the examined texts presuppose that some authors should be seen as immigrantauthors. The results of this study therefore do not support the results of earlier studies that have declared that some authors seem to be treated as immigrant authors. / Program: Bibliotekarie

In 2011 the pubic libraries in Gothenburg transitioned to floating collections. The process coincided with the temporary closing and renovation of the City Library, and was made possible by an almost simultaneous, centralisation of the libraries’ media budget that, as a side effect, also centralised the decision-making. The way that the process was decided upon and implemented gave rise to controversy, both within the administration and outside. This study delves into the decision-making process, how floating collections were introduced and how thetransition played out during the years 2011-2014. With the minutes of meeting from the so called “Library Management Group”, documents produced by the administration during the process and interviews with people involved, the study maps the steps that made the transition possible and the decisions that made it an inflamed topic. With added perspectives from organisational theory and critique of ideology the study goes into the mechanistics of decision-making within the framework of liquid modernity. It indicates a culture of decision-making that has left the bureaucracy of solid modernity behind and that sees the library organisation and employees within it as an obstacle instead of as a resource. The decision and the technical solution of floating collections is best understood as an object of ideology. That is to say that it is treated as a solution in itself to the contradictions and conflict that exists within the organisation. As the contradictions remain the decision-making in effect gives rise to more conflicts rather than less. The question from an ideological standpoint however is if this any longer poses a problem for the leadership, since there will always be new reorganisations to implement. This is a two years master's thesis in Library and information science.

Swedish public libraries have a clear mission to offer services which aim to increase the digital literacy among its users. This mission raises questions about how librarians describe the social practices of digital literacy training. This study is specifically focused on digital literacy training for seniors at Swedish public libraries. Qualitative semi-structured interviews with eight librarians and library associates and assistants were conducted and analyzed using direct content analysis, with a theoretical perspective of practice theory and digital care work. In a digitized society, unaccustomed senior users risk being shut out of social institutions and rely on the guidance of the public library. An important aspect of this is the ability to approach the problem from the user’s point of view and understand what they wish to learn. By helping the senior users to make an informed choice about digital technologies place in their lives, librarians help create an understanding for the digitized society. Librarians furthermore must handle the users emotions around digital technologies, since being unable to use them generates a negative self-image. Librarians can counteract negative stereotypes about seniors by encouraging seniors to become more engaged with digital technologies. Libraries and librarians can thereby be viewed as digital ambassadors. By acting as digital ambassadors for the digitized society, librarians can help seniors to increase their digital literacy.

This Master's Thesis studies the attitude that library employees have regarding a sex and gender-neutral treatment of their clients. The analysis is based upon replies to a questionnaire which was submitted though channels directed at library employees, like BIBLIST and BiblFeed. The respondent’s replies contained a number of welldeveloped comments making the resultant analysis both quantitative and qualitative in nature. In performing the analysis a theoretical framework combining Hirdman’s gender system with symbolic interactionism has been used together with literature about gender roles. The questionnaire showed that gender neutrality is a complex concept that can be interpreted in many different ways and is therefore easily misunderstood. It is obvious that sex is an important category when respondents are dealing with their clients, but also that sex and gender are problematic concepts which respondents find difficult to know exactly how to relate to. A lot of the respondents see a need to address gender issues, but a lot of them also state that gender is a biological concept and therefore impossible or unnecessary to have to relate to. In general, in the replies to the questionnaire availability tops the list over important questions to be addressed in the library while sex and gender have very low priority. My belief is that gender norms are possible to change and that sex and gender issues should be prioritized by virtue of being recognised as an availability issue. It is everybody’s individual fundamental values that together form society’s common fundamental values. If we all put on our gender glasses and are prepared to alter how we treat one another we can, eventually, make sex and gender less important categories and begin to see our clients as individuals.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how interested the library sector is in digitalization. In an attempt to study this, I have studied the articles in Biblioteksbladet from 2012–2016. My starting point was that digitalization affects the Swedish libraries and that the subject therefore would have a prominent role in the library magazine. The aim of this thesis is also to generate knowledge about how digitalization affects the retail sector and the library sector to visualize similarities and differences between how operators from private and public sector are affected. Three text analytical surveys were conducted: a survey inspired by quantitative content analysis, a survey inspired by qualitative content analysis and a qualitative comparative survey. The agenda-setting theory was used as an analytic tool to analyze the interest in digitalization. Theories from the business field and previous research were used in order to compare how digitalization affects the retail sector and the library sector. The results of this thesis show that about eight per cent of the articles in the magazine from 2012–2016 is about digitalization. The subject is mentioned in all of the studied magazines except one. This shows that digitalization is treated to a considerable extent in Biblioteksbladet, which is in line with my hypothesis. My study also shows that digitalization is presented as a challenge to the libraries in the majority of the articles. This means that digitalization tends to be evaluated negatively in the material. It proved to be difficult to draw clear conclusions about the library sector’s interest in digitalization using these methods. The interest that appears in Biblioteksbladet doesn’t necessarily reflect the rest of the library sector’s interest. Another result is that there are several similarities between how digitalization affects the retail sector and the library sector. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine how two Swedish libraries approach library tourism. Library tourism is a growing phenomenon seen in libraries across the world. The case study has been made on the National Library of Sweden and Stockholm Public Library. The study was conducted through qualitative measures in which methodological techniques have been used, such as interviews and analysis of relevant documents from an organizational perspective. The study aims to determine how two libraries in Stockholm are used as tourist attractions and how the personnel perceive their workplace as being a tourist attraction. The analysis is based on Foucault’s theories primarily addressing the relationship between power and knowledge and the theories of economic, social, environmental, and cultural implications of tourist-related services by both John Urry and Jonas Larsen as well as the authors So-Min Cheong and Marc L Miller. The study shows that neither of the two examined libraries has special staff for dealing with tourists, nor guidelines for this activity. The study also shows that libraries can be viewed as important rising cultural tourist attractions during the last years. Having an increasing number of tourists has been disturbing for the locals and those employed at the libraries. Both libraries’ primary focus is being an indispensable part of community life as promoter of literacy, provider of a wide range of reading material for all ages and wide-ranging loan services based on systems of branch libraries. This study suggests that both libraries have a similar approach to tourism, but also that they could be more involved in the process in order to make tourism available on their own terms. Disclaimer: This subject was decided/chosen in November 2019 before the outbreak of Covid-19 which made future tourism development more uncertain. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

Introduction. This thesis focuses on the concept of green libraries with the aim to understand how the public library can promote climate action. Since green libraries for long have been absent in Sweden, the study’s objective is to examine green libraries in an international context to address what features four German public libraries show that green libraries can fulfill; and in a national context to investigate how green libraries can apply to the Swedish public library’s role in society. Method. Semi-structured interviews with librarians at four German green libraries were conducted. The interviews were recorded, and the transcripts was analyzed thematically. In addition to the interviews, the material also consists of documents of different genres used to analyze the Swedish perspective. Analysis. The analytical framework uses a theoretical model specially designed to be used in the analysis, called the re-intermediary-model. The model demonstrates the potential of the public library as a social infrastructure in addressing societal issues, such as the issue of climate change. The analysis maps the empirical material and previous research about green libraries to show which library features it fits into. Additionally, the mapped empirical material helps identify the opportunities for green libraries in Sweden. Results. The analysis identifies several areas of interest. The results show that the German green libraries fit into the features of the theoretical model. The libraries’ green activities and services function as local meeting places; they inspire users to act with more environmental awareness; green libraries educate about climate change and ways to promote climate action in daily life; and they offer creative spaces to let the users experience sustainability. The results also show that there are many opportunities for green libraries to be applied in Sweden. Many aspects of green libraries and climate action conform to the Swedish Library Act, foremost the legislation requiring municipalities and county councils to adopt library plans which enables politicians to include climate strategies in the plans and public libraries in local climate strategies. Swedish libraries could devote themselves to conveying knowledge and information about climate change in several ways, for example through urban gardening, media and information literacy, repair cafés and lectures. Conclusion. Findings reveal that the public library can support civic abilities to participate in climate action. The view of the public library as a space for living and not only a place of books enables the library to convey information and knowledge through various activities and services. The public library’s local connection and inclusive target group give capacity to bring people closer to complex information about climate change, which could benefit climate action and promote community resilience. The thesis also show that Swedish public libraries have a potential site for addressing the issue of climate change and promote climate action.  This is a two-year master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.