Tillgänglighet av e-böcker på folkbibliotek : en aktörscentrerad idéanalys

Sammanfattning: The aim of this master thesis is to investigate ideas in the Swedish debate about e-books in relation to Litteraturutredningen (2012), with focus on ideas that concern access of e-books within the public library. Access is discussed in relation to Buckland’s (1991) six barriers of access of information and Habermas’s (2003) democratic public sphere, as well as the Swedish Library Act (2013:801). I am focusing on ideas within the aspects of libraries, authors and publishers. The method I use is called idea analysis, which is a textual analytic method. Within the idea analysis I have constructed dimensions, which are used to sort the material and present an overview of the ideas analysed in the material. For the analysis I have constructed four dimensions, which have been created by analysing the primary aspects of Buckland’s (1991) four barriers of access of information. The four dimensions are: 1. The view of the libraries role. 2. Financial costs. 3. The view of the users/ knowledge that the users need. 4. The view of the system and the technical solutions. The discussion relates the access of e-books to the previous research and the theoretical aspects, and for example discusses the relation between the role of giving access to e-books in public libraries and the role of giving access to e-books in commercial markets. The results of the analysis show that many of the ideas are strongly related to the fourth barrier of Buckland (1991), which is Cost to the provider, and that ideas related to the user and the system are rarer. The conclusion shows that libraries, authors and publishers are positive to the existence of e-books at public libraries, and that the best way of giving access to e-books is by implementing a national system. However, there is a conflict between how the library, the authors and the publishers interpret the role of the public library in relation to the commercial market.