En rad problem uppstår när världen blir allt mer digitaliserad. När samhället och dess bärande tjänster förflyttas från det fysiska mötet till den digitala arenan riskerar människor med bristande digitala kompetenser att bli exkluderade. I och med detta demokratiproblem har biblioteken tilldelats en del av ansvaret för att arbeta med dessa frågor genom uppdraget som kunskapsspridare inom IT. I tidigare studier har det framkommit att det finns oklarheter i hur detta uppdrag ska tolkas, att det finns bristande digitala kompetenser för att utföra uppdraget, samt att biblioteket har en viktig samhällelig roll i dessa frågor. Denna intervjustudie utförd i Stockholmsregionen har haft för avsikt att undersöka bibliotekariers syn på de utmaningar detta uppdrag innebär, samt att applicera det teoretiska ramverket DigComp för att utforska vilka digitala kompetenser som relaterar till biblioteksbesökarnas hjälpbehov i digitala frågor. Studiens teoretiska analys visar att besökarnas digitala hjälpbehov i olika grad relaterar till alla de kompetensområden DigComp presenterar vilket kan bidra till att sätta ord på besökarnas hjälpbehov, utröna vilka digitala kompetenser bibliotekspersonal kan tänkas behöva inneha samt bidra till beslutsprocessen kring vad uppdraget inom det digitala området bör innefatta. Studiens tematiska analys visar att informanterna delvis inte har den tid, det intresse eller de digitala och pedagogiska kompetenser som krävs för att kunna fullfölja det uppdrag som tilldelats. Det kan därför också ses som paradoxalt att denna yrkesgrupp tilldelats detta uppdrag. / A series of problems arise when the world becomes increasingly digital. When society and its supporting services move from physical meetings to the digital arena, individuals with lacking digital competences risk being excluded. Due to this democracy problem the Swedish public libraries have been assigned one part of the responsibility to convey knowledge regarding information technology. In previous studies it has been found that there are uncertainties in how this commission is to be interpreted, that the librarians are lacking digital competences for fulfilling this task and that the library also has an important societal role to play in these issues. This interview study conducted within the Stockholm region has been designed to investigate the librarians' views on the challenges posed by this commission, as well as applying the theoretical framework DigComp to explore which digital competences are related to library visitors' digital needs. The theoretical analysis of this study shows that the visitors' digital needs relate to all of the competences presented in DigComp in various degree. This knowledge can help to express which competences relate to the needs of visitors, identify the digital competences that library staff may need to possess and contribute to the decision-making process regarding what the mission within the digital field should include. The thematic analysis of the study shows that the interviewed librarians in part do not have the time, interest or digital and educational competences required to complete the assignment commissioned to the public libraries. It can therefore also be seen as paradoxical that this profession of librarians has been assigned to this specific task.

Library anxiety has been a concept since 1986, when Constance A. Mellon coined the phenomenon through her qualitative study on feelings that students experienced when interacting with academic libraries. In this essay we are looking at the origin of the concept through earlier research on the known barriers, trying to see what makes library anxiety unique compared to other seemingly related concepts, for example information anxiety. We’ve found many different concepts which can be part of library anxiety, or vice-versa, and many different extensions of LAS – the original scale to measure library anxiety. We aim to unravel some of those concepts we find of importance for library anxiety and its discourse. Looking at this through the lenses of Koselleck’s take on conceptual history, we see possible conflicts on where the concept library anxiety are heading; depending on what aspects of the concept the researcher read into and focusing on and in what context and time the articles were made. We also try to see who is considered responsible for shaping the discourse and if there is some kind of hegemonic struggle therein.