The purpose of this thesis was to, in a selected municipality, examine the position of bibliotherapy in reading groups in public libraries. To attain the purpose of the thesis the following questions were asked; What opinions does the librarians in the existing reading groups have on bibliotherapy? What kind of bibliotherapeutic elements exist in the investigated reading groups? Can the reading groups have bibliotherapeutic elements regardless if they were planned for such purposes? Could bibliotherapy be relevant to the public libraries work with the target group mental disabilities in accordance to library law? As a method seven semi-structured qualitative scientific interviews were conducted alongside one web survey. Six of the interviews were implemented with librarians in public libraries and one with two trained bibliotherapists at a hospital library. The theory used was Elizabeth Brewster’s development of Caroline Shrode’s three phases identification, catharsis and insight, where bibliotherapy is divided into four overlapping kinds of bibliotherapy: emotive bibliotherapy, informative bibliotherapy, social bibliotherapy and escapist bibliotherapy. The results show that there are distinct observations of Shrodes three phases in one of the reading groups that fit the description of Brewsters emotive bibliotherapy. In the librarians’ description of the rest of the reading groups, several elements of social, informative and escapist bibliotherapy can also be found. However, in those groups a clear identification of Shrodes theoretical phases are much more elusive, even if there are some similarities. The reading groups’ content of bibliotherapeutic elements appears to be, to some extent, independent of the librarians’ knowledge of bibliotherapeutic terms and denominations. Bibliotherapeutic work seems to be close to unknowingly performed by the librarians in the reading groups, which none the less does not seem to affect its efficiency. Further knowledge about bibliotherapy is assessed to be beneficial to the reading groups in public libraries, which in turn would contribute to the fulfilling of the goals in library law.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-93380 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Spånberger, Emmie |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för kulturvetenskaper (KV) |
| 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 |
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