Gråberg och grå litteratur : Förändringar i informationsförsörjningen på Sveriges geologiska undersökning

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study is to investigate how employees at the Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU) and librarians at SGU and Uppsala university library (UUB) experience challenges and changes in the information provision for geologists at SGU after an organizational change of the library function at the survey. After the closure of the library at SGU in 2015 the survey buys some of their needed library service from UUB, while most of the SGU library collections are left at the survey. To investigate the experiences I conducted interviews with current and former geologists and former librarians at SGU and a librarian at UUB. I also investigated some key documents to provide a framework to the interviewee’s experiences, to compare this with the goals of the coordination between SGU and UUB, and to try and shed light on the role of the library within the survey. The study was based on a constructivist point of view where the interviewee’s experiences of the changes is in focus, giving a deeper understanding of their information needs and how they have been affected by the changes of the library function. I have looked at the changes in information provision for the employees at SGU as a result of changes in SGU’s library activities, that is, changes in the organization of SGU. The results were therefore analyzed using a combination of organizational theories on public administration and business concept approaches, which is motivated by how public administration has changed in recent decades. The results show that geologists at SGU rely heavily on old publications, grey literature and publications about Swedish conditions. This is opposed to what UUB offers in terms of ”hot science” and international literature to meet the needs of the researchers and students at Uppsala university. Also, since UUB only took over a small part of the collections from the SGU library as part of the agreement, the SGU employees have a significant need for help obtaining literature that is left at the former SGU library. As a result of the changes in information provision, the interviewed geologists at SGU feel that the closure of the library at SGU has had a negative impact on their work performance. Because of this they also feel that there is a contradiction between the regulation of the survey, which states that the main focus for SGU is to collect, manage and disseminate information, and the decision to close the library. The conclusions are that although the libraries at SGU and UUB both offer literature in the field of geology there are big differences in the kind of geological literature that the users need and what the different libraries can or could offer. In a larger perspective, this study can contribute to a deeper understanding of the role of special libraries and what can happen to the information provision when a library closes. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.