This thesis has examined regional and municipal cultural policy documents and public library policy documents. The purpose of the study was to examine and discus which preconceptions about the public library the policy documents contains. The chosen method and theory to achieve this purpose was discourse analysis, new institutional theory was applied in order to discuss the preconceptions that the discourse analysis made visible. The regional and municipal cultural policy documents did not mention the public library as much as expected. The findings from the analysis show that the discourses identified in the policy documents were relatively similar. The discourses found in the regional cultural policy documents were: the literary discourse, the multifunctional discourse and the societal development discourse. Only the multifunctional discourse was identified in the municipal cultural policy documents. In the public library policy documents four discourses where identified: the literary discourse, the information-conveying discourse, the multifunctional discourse and the societal development discourse. The preconception that where made visible during the discourse analysis can be considered as a result of reproduction of other policy documents from the cultural policy field. According to institutional theory this can be viewed as isomorfism, and the policy documents are used to achieve legitimacy. In order to survive the regions, municipalities and public libraries reproduce values, norms and demands from the cultural policy field. During the analysis it became clear that there were two different logics present in the cultural and library policy documents: a market based logic and library logic. This is a two years master´s thesis in Library and Informations Science.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine if the position of children’s culture in Swedish cultural politics has been affected by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) becoming Swedish law. The study analyse the cultural political strategies in four local and regional councils to see if they aligns with the UNCRC and highlights how these four councils are thinking in their ongoing work with their respective cultural political strategies, considering this new prerequisite. The study is based on an hermeneutic perspective, standing for qualitative systems of understanding and interpretation. The theoretical starting-point for the study is Dorte SkotHansen’s model defining three rationals which have dominated the local cultural policies the last decades. The methods I am using in the study is text analysis in the shape of idea analysis according to Skot-Hansens three culture political rationalities. The study also includes qualitative interviews in order to gain a deeper understanding for the cultural political strategies. The study is a comparing analysis of the UNCRC and the four strategies. The study shows a good correspondance between the culture plans and the UNCRC. The municipalities have in many ways implemented the UNCRC’s perspective on culture in their cultural political strategies already. However much of the work is still unclear as the implementation of the law is still in its infancy.