”Det där med yrkesrollen förändras ju litegrann.” : Folkbibliotekariers resonemang kring sin yrkesidentitet i ett föränderligt samhälle.

Sammanfattning: A public library is a place in constant change. It follows the developments in society considering both social and digital aspects and it must adapt to these changes. The library profession is also affected by these changes, and librarians need to relate to it. The aim of this Bachelor´s thesis is to gain insight in how public librarians view their professional identity in relation to the changing role of public libraries. We have used semi structured interviews to answer the following research questions: How do public librarians reason about their competences and tasks? How do public librarians reason about the mission of public libraries and its role in society? How do the public librarians view the changes that they notice in their profession? To analyze our result we used a theoretical framework consisting of Anders Ørum (1993) and Trine Schreibers (2006) librarian identities and the concept “to librarize” presented by Johanna Rivano Eckerdal (2018). We found that the respondents in our study all expressed themselves in line with the identity of the “social worker”, this is also reflected when they reason about the changes in public libraries. The social worker identity means having a user centered approach and this is also how our respondents view change. They are mostly open towards change and discuss how the changes can be implemented. When they notice something that they consider not being part of their role as a librarian they debate this like Rivano Eckerdal suggests when she talks about “librarizing”.