Barnbibliotekskonsulenters arbete utifrån barnkonventionen – en framgång?

Abstract

Since its ratification in Sweden in 1990, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has become a part of the law of nations and intended to suffuse the public sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine how children’s library consultants work to implement the CRC in children’s library activities in Sweden. We have tried to discover whether the CRC is basic in the work of children’s library consultants or if is rather employed to strengthen certain areas or projects. The Children’s Ombudsman has assembled seven factors of success to implement the CRC in the public sector. These factors formed the basis of the questionnaire survey we sent to children’s library consultants as well as the basis of our tools of analysis. Our results show that the work of children’s library consultants cannot be seen as completely successful in implementing the CRC. We can establish that most children’s library consultants claim that they deliberately use the CRC as basic in their work. We have also considered whether the Swedish Library Association recommendations for public library children activities have had any impact. Children’s library consultants answered that they are well aware of the recommendations, but suggest that they should be rephrased, somewhat. We have chosen the concept “child’s perspective” as our theoretical starting point and suggest that this is a comprehensive point of view found in both the CRC as well as in the recommendations of the Swedish Library Association.