Swedish libraries can be said to have entered a new phase characterized by librarians deliberately reflecting both on their libraries’ relation to society and on their own work procedures in libraries. One sign of this phase has been the campaign Bibliotek mot rasism (Libraries against racism). In this thesis, Bibliotek mot rasism together with three other instances of anti-racist actions on the part of librarians are investigated. These include the removal from libraries of children’s books featuring the character Lilla Hjärtat, the refusal to buy the book Massutmaning about the cost of immigration, and library associations not wanting to attend the Gothenburg Book Fair in 2017 because the racist newspaper Nya Tider was invited to attend the fair. The aim of the thesis is to illustrate the above mentioned new phase in library work. In order to do this, different texts in which the librarians explain their actions are studied. The questions asked are: How have the librarians reasoned? How have they looked upon their own role? Based on what contentions have they taken a stand? The results show different reasonings relevant to the different actions. When it comes to how the librarians have looked upon their own role and what arguments they have used to support their actions however, there are similarities between some of the librarians. The most frequently occuring roles are the willingness to show that the libraries are accessible for everyone and to stop the normalization of racism. When it comes to how the librarians argue to support their actions all of them refer to regulatory documents to do so. A statement referred to by several of the librarians is the equal value of everyone as regulated in the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Another regulatory document referred to by several of the librarians is the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-414064 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Persson, Anders |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för ABM |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Uppsatser inom biblioteks- & informationsvetenskap, 1650-4267 ; 788 |
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