Var finns mjölken? En genreteoretisk studie av indirekt förmedling.

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to investigate indirect advisory services directed at adult readers of fiction in Swedish public libraries. Our interest in the subject is born out of a joint feeling of the importance of indirect advisory services and a concern that it is not being discussed to any great extent in public libraries today. Still it is something that almost every librarian come into contact with every day – and certainly every patron. The previous research on the subject contains mainly literature of a consultative nature; how-to-books. Studies on how different parts of indirect advisory services affect the user are more or less absent. Our investigation is primarily aimed at defining the elements which constitutes indirect advisory services and at investigating what possible effect those elements can have on the actors involved – staff as well as patrons. Our study is based on genre theory as formulated by a number of different theorists. Our approach is grounded in the more philosophical thoughts of Clay Spinuzzi and Jack Andersen and based on a concrete framework originally designed by Sara Kjellberg. Our empirical findings consist of observations of four different Swedish public libraries: Eslöv, Landskrona, Trelleborg and Vellinge. Our findings show that the main element of indirect advisory services directed at adult readers of fiction in Swedish public libraries is variation. We also note an adherence to other actors in the literary surroundings – such as book stores and publishers – that reduces the variation which in the long run threatens the fundamental ideological idea of the public library. Furthermore, we see an institutional identity that is so strong that the variation does not stray from set patterns – what is produced is more of the same. However, we can also see exceptions that show the great knowledge of the library staff and the commitment they have to fiction. We also see that fiction has a prominent place in the library which gives us great hope that patterns can be broken.