This Bachelor thesis studies the use of student employees at academic libraries, a subject that has been paid little attention in Swedish library and information science. The aim is to contribute with an increased knowledge and deeper understanding of how the work of student employees can be understood in relation to the library’s quality and accessibility. The main questions examine underlying causes for staffing with students, their tasks, the consequences that staffing with student employees might bring, and how the results of the above questions can be understood in relation to the library profession in the academic library. The method used is semistructured interviews, five of which were individual interviews with library management, and one which was a focus group interview with student employees. The interviews are analyzed in relation to earlier research and Andrew Abbotts theory of professions. The result shows that the underlying causes for using students to staff the library is foremost a willingness from the library’s side to offer generous openings hours, in combination with economical aspects. As the amount and character of reference questions are fairly low and don’t require the attention of a librarian, neither library management nor student employees see the work done by the student staff as a threat to the quality of the library’s service. However, the result indicate different views on how the use of student employees might affect the library profession and leads to a discussion concerning whether the work at the information desk is to be seen as part of the profession in academic libraries.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:hb-10280 |
| Date | January 2016 |
| Creators | Luusuaniemi, Paula |
| Publisher | Högskolan i Borås, Akademin för bibliotek, information, pedagogik och IT |
| 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 | Kandidatuppsats i biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap vid Institutionen Bibliotekshögskolan ; 2015:59 |
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