Biblioteket som mötesplats – vad menas med det?

Abstract

This thesis examines how library employees experience the library as a meeting place. Our questions are:

What effect has the concept of a "library as a meeting-place" for library staff? How do they see the library as a meeting place? How do they see their workplace as a venue for meetings?

The respondents interviewed work in public libraries. We were inspired by a cultural geographic theory that we re-designed. The following divisions were made in order to give the work a definitive structure:

The "mental space" The library as a meeting place on a global and universal level; The "conceived space" Librarians and planners' thinking on the specific library as a meeting place; The "living space" How library staff perceive that the library is used as a meeting place in reality.

In our analysis, we use a phenomenographic qualitative interpretive methodology. Phenomenography concerns the differences and variation of a phenomenon. In our case, this is how the library staff experiences the library as a meeting place. The result of our interviews gives us indications that the majority of respondents think the library is a meeting place for visitors (from the local community). It appears the library, as a venue, is used for many kinds of meetings. There are the meetings between visitors – but also meetings within the physical premises or concerning organising the library itself. We found that our respondents see the library as a meeting place from three different angles: from a societal perspective, an individual perspective and a library perspective.