”Det är åtminstone mer ansträngande att ta sig till biblioteket” : En studie om folkbibliotekets tillgänglighet i svensk glesbygd ur användares och personals perspektiv

Sammanfattning: The purpose of this master’s thesis is to study the perceptions of accessibility among users and staff at a Swedish public library in a sparsely-populated area. The subject of public libraries in sparsely-populated areas has been studied in a number of previous theses, but a lack of user perspective is evident. This thesis poses two questions: What are the similarities and differences in the users’ and the staff’s perceptions of accessibility in the library services? What are the similarities and differences between users’ and staff’s perceptions of accessibility and their perceptions of the roles of the library respectively? The study’s theoretical frameworks was derived from Michael Buckland’s model of information barriers, and Andersson and Skot-Hansen’s model of the four roles of the public library. The method of data collection was primarily semistructured interviews with users and staff, to a lesser degree document analysis and observations. The results show that users focus on the barrier of too short opening hours, and lack of certain content in the library collection, whereas the staff view the strained human resources as the largest barrier to accessibility. Perceptions of the overall library operation can help to explain the differences. The users view the library as a somewhat static range of services associated with culture and knowledge, whereas the staff perceive the library as playing a active role in promoting culture and knowledge.