”Vi är platsen helt enkelt” : Folkbibliotekarien och mötesplatsen – en diskursanalys.

Abstract

The bachelor thesis examines conceptions behind the Swedish public librarian’s opinions of the public library as a meeting place. The study uses the critical discourse analysis, developed by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, to analyze a focus group interview. The discourse analysis identifies four themes in the empirical material: the imagined arena of the meeting place, the behaviour in the meeting place, the meeting place’s librarian and the polemic against the meeting place. Within the themes an antagonistic struggle is identified between a democratic, an individualistic and an organizational discourse. The three discourses strive to define the public library and its librarian. As a result, a degree of ambiguity can be found in the public librarian’s conception of the idea of the public library as a meeting place. The thesis further discusses how the polemic attitude in the empirical material could possibly be linked to the idea of the library as a meeting place founded in a local political sphere, rather than to the theories in library- and information science. The thesis finally identifies the current research on low-intensive meeting places in library- and information science as a possible solution to the ambiguity in the public library regarding the value of the meeting placeaspect.