The purpose of this bachelor's thesis has been to see in what way the relationship between the librarians' views on the users, and their views on the librarian acting as an intermediary, impacts on the choice of reading and on the way in which activities are designed in direct literature mediation toward adult public library users. The investigation has been based on four semi-structured interviews. A qualitative content analysis has been conducted within a thematic framework based on Jofrid Karner Smidt's mediation roles (1994) and Carl Gustav Johannsen's user images (2009). The key findings are that the librarian most often acts in the capacity of authority or as a critic (Smidt, 1994); however, in a process of personalisation and socialisation, in addition she takes the position as a normal being (Grøn & Balling, 2012; Smidt, 1994). Moreover, we have found that the librarians' views on the user vary depending on whether the mediation is planned or spontaneous – from this follows that she designs the mediation either vertically/authoritatively or horizontally/collaboratively (Grøn & Balling, 2012). Following from previous research (Hansson, 2005; Schreiber, 2006), we have, moreover, identified a new mediation role, i.e. the librarian as a social worker, and a new user image, i.e. the user as a normal being.

The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine which skills Swedish public librarians consider necessary for their work with e-books regarding the acquisition and handling of e-books, as well as the meeting with the user. This study also examines how the librarian’s role as mediator has changed due to e-books, according to librarians. The method used to collect the data was a digital survey that was distributed to 75 public libraries in Sweden and Lundmark’s “skill flower” and Abbotts theory of professions were used to analyze the results. The survey received answers from 132 respondents that showed that it is important for librarians to have technological skills in order to assist users with problems regarding e-books. Librarians should also have a good understanding of how the relationship between the library and the e-book provider works in order to understand why there are certain limitations surrounding e-books. It is also important for librarians to be able to communicate and listen to the users’ problems, as well as inform the users of e-book services at the library. The biggest change for librarians role as mediator is that there are new things that needs to be mediated to the users and librarians need new skills, such as technological skills, to be able to do this. Other skills such as pedagogical skills and literature knowledge the librarians already possess, they simply need to adapt them to newer technologies.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study what public librarians' literature mediation looks like on Tiktok by exploring some librarians' experiences and perspectives and by mapping posts on the libraries Tiktok accounts to see which patterns emerge. The method for the study is qualitative semi-structured interviews with librarians as well as a quantitative content analysis of Tiktok-posts from the libraries where the interviewed librarians work. Analysis of the empirical material has been conducted within a thematic framework based on Jofrid Karner Smidt's mediation roles (1994). The key findings are that the librarian mostly acts as an educator and as a social anthropologist in the selection of literature, but that the librarian in the posts appears in the librarian's role as an ordinary person who conveys subjective experiences as a reader and tries to participate in the reading community Booktok on Tiktok. There is great possibility of designing videos on Tikok in order to reach users, but this requires knowledge of the aesthetics of the platform.