Finna nya stigar : en kvalitativ intervjustudie om mångspråksarbete på Internationella biblioteket

Sammanfattning: This study aims to examine how study participants at the International Library in Sweden work with multilingual literature. Interviews with members of the staff were performed by using the critical incident technique. Qualitative content analysis was used to find themes and categories in the interviews. The following research questions are used in this study: According to the informants, what governs their work, how is it organized and who, according to them, are the library’s users? How do the informants work with multilingual media, what challenges do the informants encounter and how do they work with these challenges? The theoretical framework used to analyze the results originates from models of collection development, theories of strategies in organizations and theoretical frameworks of learning in organizations. The results of the study show that the informants face several challenges in the process of working with multilingual media. The study also presents different strategies used by the informants to meet these challenges. The results suggest that the International library in Sweden is an organization characterized by adhocracy and learning with a strong occurrence of emergent strategies. Many times the informants must make their way up as they go along. The results suggest that working with multilingual collection building demands experience and adaptation to new situations and highlight the importance of language skills and support between colleagues