A trend since the early 90’s has been that some public libraries offer a special shelf containing environmental information to the community, but it seems as though the subject has been overlooked by the literature and the science community. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to study how three independent public libraries work with environmental information that is made available to the community. The following questions were addressed: 1) Which arguments can be found as to why the libraries offer this activity? 2) How does the environmental work at the public libraries look and what does it contain of? 3) Are there any similarities or differences in this work between the three libraries?To answer these questions interviews with librarians were carried out; observations were made to complement the interviews. Kathryn Miller’s theory “the libraries green role” (2010) was used to identify which roles the libraries played in the local community. Miller suggests that there are two possible roles that the library can play in order to contribute to the greening of the community: that of an environmental leader and/or environmental educator. The results showed that the libraries environmental work differed to some extent but was largely similar. The arguments behind the activity were found to be democracy and education. The libraries were in larger extent identified to act as an environmental educator than an environmental leader. / Program: Bibliotekarie

Green libraries are a relatively small but expanding part of the library world, and usually indicates a library that includes ecological sustainability in their inner or outer practices. These libraries make information about the environment available to the community. At the time of this study, the scientific material on Green Libraries is very practically oriented and often focused on what the library can do for its community, with no literature on the users’ perspective. The purpose of this bachelor's thesis was, thus, to study the users’ awareness and use of the green library services. The following questions were addressed: How have users become aware of the ecologically sustainable services in the library? How do library users use the provided ecologically sustainable services? Interviews and complementary observations were carried out to answer these questions, and a deductive thematic analysis was conducted upon the collected material. Wilbur Schramm's (1973) five causes of selective exposure were applied to identify how the green services reach the library users. The results showed that the green services were often noted in passing while the user was otherwise engaged in looking for information or services closer to their interests. Only one out of twenty individuals had taken part of the information provided by flipping through the provided books. The users sought information about the environment through other sources. However the users are positive to the fact that the library offers these services as the library is a place of information within the local community.