Evidensbaserat arbete för bibliotek : en kritisk diskursanalytisk studie

Sammanfattning: Evidence-based practice is steadily gaining popularity as the preferred choice of practice within Swedish libraries and the implementation of this practice has been the focal point for several prominent conferences organized and held in Sweden the last couple of years. There seems to be an increasing consensus within the library sphere in Sweden that this is something positive and desirable. Rarely is the ever increasing use of evidence-based practice for libraries questioned or contradicted, nor is the question of why, all of a sudden, libraries need to work according to the evidence-based practice guidelines. This lack of justification of, or at least the lack of attention to justifying the increasing use of evidence-based practice for libraries, is suspicious at best. Why are we not asking the obvious question of: Why are libraries better served by using evidence-based practice? And further on, whose interests are best served by implementing this practice? The main purpose of this thesis is to highlight, examine and critically discuss how the appropriation of an evidence-based practice for libraries can be understood as a reaction to changing socio-economical power structures within our society and to analyze the social construction of evidence-based practice as a positive (and positivistisc) discourse, and the explicit and implicit implications this can be argued to have on how we perceive knowledge and knowledge production, with specific regard to the role of libraries and librarians within the field of knowledge production. Using Antonio Gramsci’s hegemony theory combined with Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis this thesis aims to show the interconnectedness of socio-political factors and knowledge production in regards to how the discourse of proper science within the field of LIS is formulated. The results show that the rising popularity of the discourse of EBL as the preferred choice of practice within libraries can be attributed to the increasing permeation of neoliberal market reforms to the public sphere, which in turn works to undermine the legitimacy of the traditional role of the library as a democratic corner stone and thus forcing libraries to react by adapting more market oriented practices in order to legitimize the continued public funding of libraries. The results further positions the emergence of EBL as a part of a larger rise of a general hegemonic positivistic discourse within ALM which in turn claims interpretative prerogative for the production of ‘good science’ within the field.