Bilder av bildning : En studie om folkbibliotekets mål att främja intresset för bildning

Sammanfattning: Since a few years back, the term Bildung seems to be having a renaissance in Sweden, and it furthermore, in the new Swedish Libraries Act 2013, became an objective for the libraries to “promote interest in Bildung”. As the act neither defines the term Bildung nor describes how the libraries are to promote interest in it, the purpose of this study is to examine this objective. Since previous research on Bildung and public libraries is sparse, when the adjacent term “folkbildning” is not included, this study is delimited to public libraries. To investigate the objective of the public libraries to promote interest in Bildung, two preparatory works of the Swedish Library Act 2013 were analyzed. The main themes of these documents were identified using qualitative content analysis. These themes were then interpreted based on the term Bildung. A definition of this multifaceted term was made in the theoretical part of this study. The history of the term, focusing on the period of the Enlightenment and the Romantic era, was accounted for, and central ideas and philosophical traditions identified. Seminal thinkers being, among others, Immanuel Kant, Wilhelm Humboldt and Friedrich Hegel. The main result of this study is that the fulfillment of the principal objectives of the public libraries creates favorable conditions for the objective to promote interest in Bildung. The challenges to this is increased economic and politic influence or control, or that the intrinsic values of Bildung is not upheld.