Ett specialbibliotek och dess relation till användarna, en studie av Goethe-institutets specialbibliotek i Stockholm.

Abstract

In the master thesis the focus of the study has been on the special library of the Goethe-institute in Stockholm. A survey was made among the visitors coming to the library, to find out how they used the library and how they would judge the quality of service. To find out how the needs and the opinions of the users were meet by the library I also made an interview with the staff one librarian and the chief librarian. In the analysis I used the theory about service quality of Christian Grönroos as a framework. The theory distinguishes the service quality into technical resp. functional quality, experienced by the user through the profile of the organisation. A number of 30 answers were received. The results showed that all the services had good grades but that the staff was the most appreciated. The results from the survey also showed that almost all of the respondents came to the special library of the Goethe-institute to search for information about Germany or to lend material in German. In the interview was found out that the needs and interests of the users were taken care of by the staff, through the knowledge about their users. Opinions from the users were something they often received through a direct dialogue with the users at the information desk. As a whole the study showed close relations between the staff and the users which is not unusual at a special library.