The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what ideas there are about the future role of the public libraries in society, what challenges the public libraries may face and how the public libraries will continue to be a place to meet. The future of the public libraries has been, and still is, a discussed topic and many believe that public libraries have an obvious place in society. The thesis focuses on library plans from the ten largest municipalities in Sweden. The theory used to analyze the source material in the study is The Four Space Model made by Henrik Jochumsen, Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Dorte Skot‐Hansen. This model consists of four “spaces”, learning, meeting, inspiration and performative space that represents different aspects of how to manage a library, these spaces were more or less represented in the library plans. The results of the thesis showed that the library is a popular meeting place and that the public library has an important role, as an institution, to play in the society. Results also showed that cooperation between the libraries in the same municipality, but also cooperation with public libraries in other municipalities is important for the future.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the opinions of Swedish public library staff, managing makerspaces, regarding the role of their spaces. The material is derived from four semi-structured interwievs with, and four e-mail answers from staff managing makerspaces at seven public libraries in Sweden. Directed content analysis was used to interpret the results of the empirical study. The theoretical framework is based on a model for library development presented in 2012 by the Danish researchers Henrik Jochumsen, Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen, and Dorte Skot-Hansen. According to the model, the library´s mission is to support the following four goals: experience, involvement, empowerment, and innovation. The model also presents four spaces, in which the goals should be supported. These spaces are: the inspiration space, the learning space, the meeting space, and the performative space. The results show that the interviewees view makerspaces in their public libraries as a way to promote democracy and digital inclusion by offering collaborative learnings spaces.

The majority of Sweden's population has access to the Internet and are frequent users of social media. Social media do not only meet people's needs to network, but can also play a role when it comes to their information needs. The library users are on social media, so therefore it is natural for libraries to also be there. Because young people of today grow up in a digital media world, we thought it would be interesting to examine how school libraries make use of these media. The purpose of this paper is to examine high school librarians’ use of social media. We connected four research questions; why does the librarian use social media, how can the librarian use social media in their professional, how can the use of social media contribute to the librarian's skills and how does librarians communicate via social media. We used qualitative interviews as our method to answer our questions. The theoretical framework was based on Jochumsen, Hvenegaard & Skot-Hansen's "The four space" model, which regards the library as a meeting space, inspiration space, learning space and performative space. It is in the original directed at the public library, but in our application it has been adapted for the school library operations and focused on the digital part of the school library. We found that librarians use social media mainly to promote their libraries. They also use social media to keep up on current research and to keep in touch with other librarians. They all find it desirable to have more contact with their users and a greater use of two-way communication.

The purpose of this thesis is to strengthen the state of knowledge and understanding of visitors use of the library area at Skellefteå city library based on the development of guidelines for how to work with the future library area based on Jochumsen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen, Skot-Hansen’s (2012) model of the four-spaces. The model contains four important spaces for libraries; the learning, the inspiration, the meeting and the performative space and all of them interact in an ideal library. The research question in this study is: How does the library in Skellefteå work as an inspiring, learning, meeting and performative space? And according to these questions, what kind of model should a new library have according to the four-spaces? The research method that is used in this study is Given and Leckie´s observational method the seating sweeps and complementing interviews with both visitors and one of the managing librarians. The result illustrated that the most common activity was the physical search for books among children, young adults and adults. For elderly people and especially men the most popular activity was reading the newspaper. These findings showed that the library is used primarily as learning and meeting space for adults but as an inspiring and performative space only for the younger children.

In 2016 a new space for younger children opened at Malmö public library called Kanini. Kanini builds on a vision of the future library for children where flexibility, offers of new experiences and children’s participation will characterize the library space and activities. As some of the children are very young, a large group users are adults. The aim of this master’s study is to examine a) how adults use the new children’s library in relation to the intentions expressed in Kanini’s steering documents and, b) adult conceptions of Kanini. In an ethnographic approach participant observations have been carried out at Kanini as well as an analysis of Kanini’s steering documents. The theoretical framework is based on the Four Space Model constructed by Henrik Jochumsen, Casper Hvenegaard Ramsussen and Dorte Skot-Hansen, together with a model of children’s participation developed by Barbro Johansson and Frances Hultgren as well as the concept of mothering developed by Sara Ruddick. The analysis of the material shows that adults in the main use Kanini as intended according to the documentation i.e. in new and creative ways. At the same time, adults tend to have traditional ideas of what a children’s library is and how to use it. There would seem to be a contradiction in perceptions of the children’s library and how it is actually used. Conclusions include that the vision of the future children’s library may take some time to replace traditional expectations.

The aim of the thesis is to examine a number of librarians’ descriptions and opinions of what makerspace in public libraries is. The questions which will be answered are: How do the librarians in this study express and explain what makerspace is? In which ways can makerspace contribute to achieve the missions given to the public libraries, as directed in the library law, according to the librarians in this study? In which way can makerspace contribute to expand the mission of the public libraries, according to the librarians in this study? The material is derived from seven semi structured interviews, with essential personnel from makerspaces. Qualitative content analysis and the four spaces model by Henrik Jochumsen, Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Dorte Skot-Hansen. (2012) were used to analyse the interviews. The results show that makerspaces in public libraries look different all over the country. The local community shapes the makerspace, in ways of form, offer, activities, machines etc. Makerspace expand the traditional resources and offer of public libraries, by also offering digital participation. The new modern libraries with makerspace can be seen as something new and old. This because one might consider they are both. Makerspace is old in the traditional way of offering new knowledge to the public. It’s new in the way the knowledge is presented, instead of learning by reading you can now participate in activities or create and build things in order to learn how they work.  Makerspace can contribute to achieve the mission but not to expand it.

Abstract Introduction. The aim of this thesis is to examine use of library didactics in two prominent national libraries. A second aim is to identify digital resources used in the digital library spaces. The study uses “the four-space model” to examine this relation.  Method. Document analysis is used to examine the two national libraries´ websites. In addition to the websites, affiliated sites like social media are also included. Categories from the four- space model are used: learning space, inspiration space, performative space and meeting space. Digital resources are identified and presented in each category respectively.   Theories. Library didactics, as developed by for example Jochumsen, Rasmussen and Skot- Hansen, is the subject of the thesis and main theoretical focus. The digital library rooms are seen as places for possibilities and for developing innovative library practices.  Conclusion. The results imply that of the four spaces, the smallest one is the performative space and that the activities for creating are few. Different social media are to a large degree used as meeting space and thus possibilities for meeting and participation are subject to the companies’ business models and policies. In relation to the visitors the two national libraries mainly use their collections as resources in the inspiration space. One clear example is Gallica, described as a digital library with focus on digitized documents.  In the learning space the format is primarily texts with illustrations and this could be seen as an attempt from the libraries to adapt to a traditional learning environment. Furthermore it is concluded that the search functions can be a hindrance to both the visitor and to the libraries´ objectives. In the discussion, a question concerning competences is raised in regard to innovative library didactics. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.