Det kan alltid bli bättre : Bibliotekens tillgänglighet för funktionshindrade barn och ungdomar

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to examine the accessibility and barriers of public libraries to intellectual and mentally disabled children and young people. This we will do by examining whether the library staff acts according to policies of the libraries. Our method has been qualitative interviews with library staff and we have also observed the environment, media and marketing of these libraries. As a theoretical starting point of the analysis we use Michael Buckland’s different aspects of access to information. He discusses six types of barriers that must be overcome if access is to be achieved and we use five of these barriers in our study. We have attempted to answer the following questions: •What does the library range of media look like to the disabled children and young people?•Which services do the libraries offer to the disabled children and young people?•How is the physical environment designed for the disabled persons at the libraries?•How does the library inform about their services to the disabled people and market them to these groups?The results of this study show that in all libraries, the staff displayed a positive attitude towards the disabled children. We noticed that all libraries appeared to have quite a good media collection and good services for those children. After the interviews and the observations we found that the library’s environment and marketing need to be improved.