Between craftsmanship and outsourcing - challenges in purchasing literature in languages other than Swedish and English at Swedish public libraries. This paper examines how ten librarians working in Swedish public libraries perceive challenges connected to the acquisition of books in languages other than Swedish and English. It makes an attempt to explain how these challenges affect the librarians’ acquisition process and push it towards either a craftsmanship based process or a process based on a high degree of outsourcing responsibility. The method used was qualitative interviews with librarians that had acquisition of books in languages other than Swedish or English as part of their work responsibilities. A total of eight interviews, two of them group interviews with two participants, were conducted. Five of the interviewed librarians worked in a large city, while five worked in three smaller municipalities. The analysis was inspired by Evans’ & Saponaro’s model of the collection development process and Brian Quinn’s use of George Ritzer’s theory of McDonaldization to examine the state of academic libraries in the U.S.A. Three main challenges are discussed; identifying user needs, absence of language or literature knowledge and poor availability of books. The interviewed librarians acquisition processes could be said to exist on a scale between a high degree of craftsmanship and a high degree of outsourcing. One factor pushing librarians towards an outsourcing of responsibility was absence of language knowledge, which lead to a higher degree of dependency on vendor assessment of literature. Mandatory purchasing agreements and lack of adequate technical and cataloging services inhouse were also factors affecting the acquisition process as they lead to less choice in vendor selection and as a consequence hindered the librarians’ ability to take on responsibility in selecting and acquiring books.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how public libraries in Norrbotten provide multilingual media and how the commitment is legitimized. In January 2014 there was a change to the guidelines for the International Library’s service for providing multilingual media. The responsibility for the provision of this service was also changed. The result shows there has been different ways of implementing the guidelines in practice; this has led to inequalities in the local library service.We have assembled data through qualitative interviews with five different public libraries in the north of Sweden. The result has been analyzed thematically based on Dorte Skot-Hansens culture political theory. Our study shows that the way the libraries legitimize their work is basically in the social field with overreaching values as democracy and equality.

The underlying purpose of this study is to investigate how the libraries in Sweden organize and administrate the service of providing literature in other languages than Swedish. The study focuses on the central guiding principles that regulate the provision of multilingual literature and how these guidelines are implemented in to practice at the libraries. As the guidelines are closely connected to the official discourse in Sweden concerning policies targeted towards immigrants, the guidelines will be examined from a perspective of integration politics. To assemble data a survey has been conducted looking into factors such as how the libraries perceive the guidelines, how the libraries do business intelligence and user inquires to reach out to the users of the multilingual media, forms for statistics and method of working. The results points out that the libraries in their work with multilingual media are confronted with three tensions; the first tension is that between the libraries aim to promote equality and freedom for the individual and at the same time to fulfil certain collective interests and goals. The second tension emanates from the fact that the libraries intend both to promote integration within the community of the users of the library, demos, and to promote the fact that the users also enjoy membership in different ethnic communities, ethnos. Thirdly there is an underlying tension between a policy strategy that is general in the sense that all users in principle are involved as recipients and a policy strategy that is targeted as it identifies only members of a certain category of the population as its recipients.

By interviewing informants from six different libraries this study aim towards knowledge about which methods the libraries use to provide books in minority languages and how they take on questions concerning different groups and their particular needs. The study is based on the following research questions: Which factors govern how the different libraries work with books in other languages than Swedish? How do the libraries think when it comes to different language groups and their needs? How do the libraries consider the acquisition of books in the multilingual field? With the answer to those questions as a basis the study aims at investigating which factors govern the way the libraries work with the subject and how it affects the visitors in a bigger perspective. The results of the study show that the libraries are extremely dependent of budget, resources and the initiative from the librarians themselves as a result of vague and deficient guidelines and control documents. This results in a system where the working methods tend to be loose and controlled by cultural or normative elements. A lot of the informants explain that a reason could be the reorganization among the libraries as well as identity crisis in the library field in general.

This evaluational study has been initiated by the County Council of Gävleborg (LandstingetGävleborg), politically responsible (and the main economical) authority of BibliotekGävleborg, the regional library institution in the county of Gävleborg, Sweden.The aim of the study is threefolded:1. to evaluate the organization of Bibliotek Gävleborg during the 1990's as we11 as theeffects of a reorganization carried out in 1990, and, through the use of interviews and a questionnaire, to ascertain the attitudes of Bibliotek Gävleborg's branch users (mainlythe municipal libraries in the county) towards the organizational development.2. to evaluate and compare regional library activities in Gävleborg prior to and duringthe 1990's, and to investigate the attitudes of the afore-mentioned branch users towardsBibliotek Gävleborg's activities.3. to investigate and discuss possible future directions of regional library development in Sweden in general, and in Gävleborg in particular.The closing, debating chapter in the study also'contains a few suggestions of measures to enhance regional library activity in Gävleborg.