| Summary: | This master thesis examines the cross-over betweenpolicy goals, legal requirements, economicframeworks, user needs and professional ethicalstandards at public libraries in areas where many ofthe residents have a foreign background. Thepurpose is to contribute to a better understanding ofthe influence of role creation, user control andgoverning of public libraries in Sweden. Qualitativemethods were used to conduct interviews andanalysis. The collected empirical material consists oftranscribed interviews with the library staff, twopoliticians and the library director in Jönköpingsmunicipality. It also consists of the analysis ofregulatory documents governing the library inÖxnehaga. The implementation of the analysis wasbased on Andersson and Skot-Hansen's theory of therole of public libraries in the local community andon Brunssons theory of the organization ofhypocrisy. The results of the study indicate that theinvestigated library mainly adopted the role of asocial center. The results also indicate thatgovernance at the local level was most important forthe library, which places high demands on theindividual library employees. This indicate thatclearer political policies might be needed to ensure auniform set of library services for all citizens. In asimilar way, clearer political policies are neededsuch that libraries can find their raison d'être that isnot merely based on user statistics.
|
|---|
