The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to investigate what role the public library in Sweden may have when it comes to gender equality issues. The questions at issue that were asked, in order to give an answer to the aim, was how the librarians defined and saw work with equality, how much the steering documents for the library impact and what they are doing in their practice to weaken the dichotomies between the sexes. The theoretical starting point used for this study is three concepts, the gender system, the stereotypes and the gender contract described by the Swedish historian Yvonne Hirdman. The purpose of the three concepts is that gender is a social construction which produces gender stereotypes and a gender order in society, which the library is a part of. The investigation was made on one public library in Sweden where an equality project has been carried out. The method used for gathering data is qualitative interviews with three librarians at one main public library with its branches. The conclusions drawn from this study is that the librarians thought equality issues are important for the library to work with, the steering documents are weak in these questions but usable if you have carried out an equality project and finally there are many things a library can do in its practice to weaken the dichotomies e.g. deny certain books, clarify steering documents etc.

This is a survey of librarians’ image of career opportunities within the profession. In order to gain a better understanding of the profession I wanted to study the profession based on those who work in it, with the aim of trying to reach a deeper understanding of how the career paths of public librarians, college- and university librarians relate to gender and status. The starting point was the following questions: How do librarians at public libraries, college- and university libraries describe their actual and potential career paths? What patterns emerge regarding women’s and men’s description of their career paths at each type of library? The survey has been carried out by interviewing librarians about their professional careers so far and how they see their opportunities for development in the future, I have analyzed the collected material based on theories that deal with the status of the librarian profession as well as gender theory. It has been clear that most of the interviewed librarians had difficulties seeing any clear career path within the profession. I have not found any consistent view of what a career could be. Nor have I been able to discern any common patterns for how the interviewed female librarians and male librarians described their career paths or view of future career opportunities.

The aim of this thesis is to study through discourse analysis how users talk about librarians and the librarian profession and what perceptions they have regarding it. I have tried to do this by asking the questions: How do the users describe librarians and the librarian profession? Are there any patterns in what they say? The method and theory I have used is Laclau and Mouffes’ discourse theory and partially structured interviews. The material consists of interviews with eight users that are both women and men, both students and members of the public and they were between 25 and 50 years old. In the material I found two discourses: the discourse about librarians and the discourse about the librarian profession. I have come to the conclusion that images exists of librarians being older women who are caring and forthcoming but also inaccessible. The image of the librarians also includes them working with books in different ways and that they read and know a lot about literature. When the users have talked about the librarians’ knowledge they have described that librarians have different knowledge based on what they work with. Some librarians work with inter library loans and therefore have more knowledge about that.

This master thesis concerns the relationship the librarianhas to the libraries classification system. The system itselfis made by librarians for librarians and is only used bylibrarians. This raises the question of how the librariansrelate to their own system to create order. The empiricalmaterial consists of five in-depth interviews with librarians.Two theoretical approaches were used in the analysis of thematerial with one focus on the librarian’s professional rolland the other on the postmodern theories about humansneed for order. The results point towards that not alllibrarians see the classifications system as a part of theirown profession. Certain diversity can be seen between thelibrarians opinion in the mater of the classificationssystems importance in their professional role. Thelibrarians agree however that the order in the library musthowever be maintained. The librarians agree that as long asthere are needs of arranging the physical mediums of alibrary the classification system will remain. / Program: Bibliotekarie