”Vad är det du vill ha egentligen?” : förmedlarroller och användarbilder i direkt litteraturförmedling på folkbibliotek

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this bachelor's thesis has been to see in what way the relationship between the librarians' views on the users, and their views on the librarian acting as an intermediary, impacts on the choice of reading and on the way in which activities are designed in direct literature mediation toward adult public library users. The investigation has been based on four semi-structured interviews. A qualitative content analysis has been conducted within a thematic framework based on Jofrid Karner Smidt's mediation roles (1994) and Carl Gustav Johannsen's user images (2009). The key findings are that the librarian most often acts in the capacity of authority or as a critic (Smidt, 1994); however, in a process of personalisation and socialisation, in addition she takes the position as a normal being (Grøn & Balling, 2012; Smidt, 1994). Moreover, we have found that the librarians' views on the user vary depending on whether the mediation is planned or spontaneous – from this follows that she designs the mediation either vertically/authoritatively or horizontally/collaboratively (Grøn & Balling, 2012). Following from previous research (Hansson, 2005; Schreiber, 2006), we have, moreover, identified a new mediation role, i.e. the librarian as a social worker, and a new user image, i.e. the user as a normal being.