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

Sustainable development and environmental questions are currentsocial issues. Public libraries are supposed to ensure globalchanges and according to Agenda 21 every organisation aresupposed to work towards a sustainable climate. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to discuss how the conceptsustainable development is mentioned in public library plans, andanalyze the role libraries take in terms of environmentalquestions and sustainable development. The following questionswere discussed: ”Does the concept sustainable developmentoccur in the public library plans and in that case to whatextent?” ”Which similarities and differences can be found in how the concepts of environmental issues and sustainabledevelopment are addressed in the library plans?” A combined quantative and qualitative content analysis was made based on public library policies, using Kathryn Millersconcepts envionmental leader and environmental educator. The result shows that most of the libraries mention sustainable development as a general concept, often as a part of a municipal vision rather than that of a goal of the library. The results also shows that the public libraries that mention ecological sustainable development takes an environmental leadership role rather than aenvironmental educator role. The expressions related to the library as an environmental educator tends to be more substantial than the expressions related to the environmentalleader role. However, it is possible that these expressions of sustainable development is written in a rhetorical sense in away to try to market the library as an organization that contributes to sustainable development.

In a time where environmental consciousness has become a more pressing matter the public libraries have the opportunity to influence and inspire their communities to take a stand towards more environmentally sustainable communities. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to contribute to the discussion about the role of the public library in environmental issues and ecological sustainable development in relation to municipal government documents. Three municipalities with pronounced environmental focus were chosen, these are the municipality of Gävle, Helsingborg and Lund. The following questions were discussed: “What’s the role of three public libraries interms of ecological sustainability in relation to their respective municipalities' governing documents?” “What does the work involving ecological sustainability in the three municipalities' governing documents look like?” ”What does the three public libraries activities look like from an ecological sustainability perspective?”. The findings in this study were based on semi-structured interviews with informants from the public libraries in the chosen municipalities along with the municipal government documents. The material were analyzed through qualitative content analysis using Kathryn Millers concepts envionmental leader and environmental educator and Ali AlQahtany, Yacine Rezgui och Haijiang Li’s SUPD Model for a sustainable urban planning. The results show that the selected libraries to a large extent show signs that they work on the basis of municipal government documents. The study also shows that the libraries primarily take the role of environmental leaders, rather than educators. The SUPD Model was used to a large extent and correlated with the municipal documents.