Vision och rationalitet : En undersökning av tre lokala visioner för folkbibliotek med hjälp av rationalitet.

Sammanfattning: Abstract Through examining interviews with three influential civil servants at local level this Bachelor´s thesis takes a view of what visions of libraries look like at municipal level. The examination is carried out through qualitative text analysis consisting of thematisation and discussion of the interview material. Focus is on the relationship between the interview material and the three rationalities, the humanistic, the sociological and the instrumental that are drawn from a model for categorizing Scandinavian cultural policy, developed by Dorte Skot-Hansen. The primary issue is whether the visions of libraries are based on ideological perspectives and which perspective and, if so, which perspective is dominating each vision. The analysis reflects the complexity of sometimes contradictive perspectives that are to be seen. To help identify differing and dominating perspectives that appear in the interviews, the question of priorities concerning the future role of the local library is raised. A model by Andersson and Skot-Hansen constructed to help discussing and prioritising the function of the local library, is applied to the interview material. To further analyse the ideological content of the visions the material is compared with scientific literature within the subject. The arguments of the visions are compared to the argumentation of scholars in the same field. These often have presented models and analyses in the same line of research, cultural policy concerning libraries, as Skot-Hansen. Concluding it is argued that it is possible to see differing ideological perspectives in the local visions of libraries and to varying extent. Conclusions are drawn from a comparison of what has come from the analyses of which function of the library is prioritised in each interview and the tendencies seen in the material to the three rationalities from the model by Skot-Hansen. Two visions land in line with humanistic rationality but from different viewpoints. One vision is in accordance with sociological rationality. The extent that discussion of instrumental market directed rationality has in scientific literature on the subject does not answer to the result of this examination. The thesis could be seen as a minor post in the discussion about the direction of the local library, a discussion that Skot-Hansen intended her models to be used for.