Hur folkbibliotekarier i några mindre svenska kommuner upplever sin yrkesroll

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to examine how public librarians in small Swedish municipalities experience their professional roles. As part of examining such an abstract subject as experiences we also examine what tasks they perform, which will function as a support of the analysis. The theoretical frame-work is based on librarian identities worked out by Anders Ørom and a model of professional roles worked out by Maj Klasson. The analytical procedure consists of both deductive and inductive viewpoints. The empirical material consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews with five librarians that work in public libraries located in municipalities with less than 12 500 inhabitants. Based on the empirical material, i.e. the inductive viewpoint, four themes have been identified: interlibrary loan and service, literary knowledge, education and the multidimensional library work. The deductive viewpoint, based on the identities/roles worked out by Ørom and Klasson, results in these findings: the two identities that stand out the most are the information intermediary and the information organizer, other identities discovered are the documentalist, the social worker and the experience intermediary. In conclusion, most of the identities that Ørom worked out can be identified, but it is fairly difficult placing the statements of the informants in only one identity as one and the same expression can be interpreted into several different identities.