Vad ska man mäta för att veta? : en studie av resursfördelningen inom Stockholms stadsbibliotek

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this master’s thesis is to study resource allocation among district libraries within Stockholm’s City Library (SSB) on three different occasions – 1996, 2001 and 2005 – and to examine whether there exist any inconsistency between the state of the allocation of resources and what might be considered reasonable. During the course of the study, it became apparent that some measurements are more relevant than others when determining whether the allocation of resources is reasonably fair. The most relevant ratio is the share of net cost per capita in relation to population and the population’s composition of children, youngsters and persons with foreign background as a result of relevant political governing documents giving priority to these three groups. The discerned pattern is that a majority of those libraries that over the years have functioned as superior or coordinated libraries have - in relation to their share of the population and regardless of the population’s composition - had a consistently higher share of resources. Those libraries participating in the district board attempt have had a higher share. A third group is a small number of branch libraries which when threatened with closure have been saved by local opinion mobilizing and which where subsequently awarded a nominally larger share of available resources. It would appear to be the case that some libraries within SSB have ended up in bad and good circles, respectively, in terms of resource allocation as was the case in Anna Rydén-Hamström’s study 2003 of libraries in the municipality of Uppsala.