Vilken roll spelar det nya stadsbiblioteket? En användarundersökning på Stadsbiblioteket i Halmstad

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to examine what role the new city library in Halmstad has for its users. The questions posed in this study are: What do the users actually do at the library? What roles are the most significant according to the users? Have the politicians succeeded in their intention of realizing a modern library according to the users? The theoretical starting point is Andersson’s and Skot-Hansen’s theory of four different roles of public libraries. In order to extend the model we added a fifth function; the one of aesthetical experience. We used a qualitative method and received 504 questionnaires. The empirical data indicates that the most important role is the one as cultural centre, i.e. traditional use of the library as borrowing of books and other media, reading newspapers and magazines and so forth. The roles of knowledge centre, information centre, social centre and the aesthetical function are also important to the users. Our conclusions are that the original idea of realizing a modern library has been a great success.