The purpose of this essay is to examine how a newly built library and an old library from the sixties work out of an experience and feeling oriented view. Are the fundamental conditions of an old library compatible with the library standards of today? To be able to carry out this examination we have chosen two rather small Swedish libraries. One is the public library of Hässleholm, which opened in the year 2000, and the other is the public library of Kristianstad opened in 1965. The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists of literature studies and qualitative observations and interviews. The first main chapters of this essay are an overview of literature found on the subject. This is followed by a chapter including empirical material, were our libraries are introduced. In the discussion we reason about what we found from our literature studies and combine this with our findings from our empirical studies. Our conclusion is that both our two libraries succeed in satisfying the demands of a library today. The library in Kristianstad has, due to age and shortage of space, problems with operating the library. In Hässleholm the localities are furnished more from an ornamental than a functional point of view. This leads to a suboptimal utilization of the premises. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This thesis addresses the library environment and how it affects the accessibility for the library users. A study is made of the public library in Eslöv. We wanted to find out how the library staff, the senior librarian and the architect discuss the library environment, considering:• The accessibility for the library users.• The possibility for the users to orientate themselves in the library.We also wanted to see how we as users experience the library environment and compare these experiences with the results from the interviews. The material used consists of qualitative interviews, observations of users and our own experience studies. As tools to analyse our material we used a phenomenographic method and experience analysis. The analysis was based upon interdisciplinary theories mainly from our own field, environmental psychology and architecture. We found that the respondents discussed the library in two ways. As a lively, pleasant and permitting place for people to spend time in different ways, and as a serious place for work and study that needs to be calm and quiet. The possibility for the users to orientate themselves was also discussed in different ways. As a problem concerning the signs on the bookshelves and the difficulties to make them logical for the users, and as the problem that the users often could not find their way to different parts of the library. We also found that we as users missed clear signs in the library to a greater extent than the respondents. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this study is to examine how librarians experience implementations of changes in the physical space of the public library. The study seeks to answer the following questions from the librarians’ perspective: What are the underlying reasons for changes in the physical space of the library? What are the important functions of the public library to the community residents? What reactions do librarians get from community residents after changes in the physical space of the public library? The study is based on semi-structured interviews with librarians working at seven small public libraries in Sweden. A model of four library spaces, which was developed by Andersson and Skot-Hansen in 1994 and refined in 2012, is used as a theoretical framework to help analyzing the results. The majority of the libraries are structured according to the older version of the model. The results give evidence to the public’s understanding of the library as a physical space, a place where you can find books in shelves and qualified staff ready to help you with your questions. The findings also show that changes of the physical space are for example due to the need for bigger rooms, technical development or meeting place for the public. Finally, the results demonstrate that nearly all of the visitors to the libraries react positively to changes in the physical space and that more than half of the seven libraries have statistics giving evidence to an increasing number of physical visits and borrowed material. / Program: Bibliotekarie

Library architecture today is a complicated history. Public libraries are no longer merely a place for book storage, but also a virtual library a social meeting place and a place for study. All these diverse tasks and roles emerge in the democratic designing process of a new library and also transform into the architecture. The underlying process is the evaluation and negotiation of the libraries overall tasks and ideas, ideals and values. Multiple ideologies are incorporated in library architecture. Of greatest importance is the ideology of the library itself. This candidate thesis is a case study of the public library in Arlov. My aim is to find out how ideas, ideals and values of democracy are expressed in the library building. I want to find out in what extent library staff have had impact in the designing process and also how these ideologies of library transforms into architecture as regarding to aesthetics, symbolism and function. The thesis is based on both empirical and theoretical material. The last part is a discussion which deals with issues like library architecture and democracy in Arlov as well as in a wider perspective. / Uppsatsnivå: C

This master’s thesis will try to describe the beginning and development towards a modern public library of the town library in Karlskrona between 1906 and 1959. The specific years refers to the year the library was established and the year it moved to the new library building in the centre of Karlskrona. The aim of the thesis has been to do this historical description and to look at the course from the perspective of the national policies and development for the Swedish modern public library. The thesis is based mainly on reports of the proceedings of the public library and other biographical documents and literature, which has been found in two local archives. Criticism of the sources, chronological description and a hermeneutic approach has been used as a method to analyse the different documents. The thesis starts out from which interests created the library, in what way the library was affected by the national library reorganisation in 1930 and what characterised the long process of reaching access to enough space for a fully acceptable activity, which has been the main issue throughout the history and therefore this thesis. A general observation of the development of the town library of Karlskrona is that it starts and follows very well with the national policies and development of the activity of the modern public library. This is not surprising as, for one reason, all public libraries were more or less financially dependent on subsidies and organizational support. / Uppsatsnivå: D

Den här uppsatsen undersöker biblioteksarkitekturens utveckling från 1970 till idag. Utifrån diskursanalysens principer samt genom en traditionell arkitekturanalys redovisas bibliotekets utveckling både vad gäller funktion, utseende och placering i stadsrummet. Genom fallstudier undersöks också arkitekturen hos Norrköpings stadsbibliotek, Uppsala stadsbibliotek samt Halmstads stadsbibliotek för att exemplifiera utvecklingen och ge en utökad bild av stadsbibliotekens arkitektoniska utveckling.

The focus of this two year master’s thesis in Library- and Information science is the study of two Swedish Public Library buildings with the examples Lomma and Halmstad. The main goal and purpose of the thesis is to try to uncover which views and values of the public library are expressed in the examined libraries; and to what extent these views manifests are shown in its architecture. The theoretical framework is based on Raymond Williams’s cultural concepts of effective, dominant culture and the two extremities of this culture, called residual and emergent cultures. A second aspect is Yi-Fu Tuans concepts of Space and Place. The study also uses a historical background of Swedish Public Library Buildings. By close reading and textual analyses, the empirical study focuses on the municipalities’ documents surrounding the building of the library buildings in Lomma and Halmstad. The architectural perspective is studied through the architects own documents and architectural journals discussing the built Library Buildings. Results show that the technological advances of the time these libraries were built has put them in a position of change, which also is visible in the architecture. The libraries in Lomma and Halmstad function as civic icons of the community and the architecture is very dependent of the places where they are situated. The expressions of the two libraries differ in details but the overall result show that the values exhibited behind the building of the examined libraries is a part of a historical residual culture, functioning as effective and dominant. The conclusion of the thesis is that the expression of the architecture is however a part of an emergent culture. The buildings aim to comprise the values and display the diverse causes in its architecture. The buildings seek to manifest the ideal activity and working of the modern Public Library.