Vi hjälper till så gott det går : En intervjustudie om folkbibliotekariers upplevelse av digitala frågor i informationsdisken på folkbibliotek

Sammanfattning: Swedish public libraries offer different kinds of digital help for their users. Sometimes by ”digital drop in” or ”smartphone courses”, and sometimes spontaneously at the reference desk. This study investigates librarians’ experience of helping users with non-traditiontal library questions, for example: banking issues and smartphone problems. Four librarians were interviewed and a phenomengraphical theoretical approach was taken. In the beginning of the interviews the informants was asked to define what digital questions are for them which resulted in a broad definition that included for example: Youtube, copying, e-mail, e-books, wifi, virtual reality and information seeking. The interviews were transcribed and then categorized in four themes that was especially prominent: definition of digital questions, what should the library help with, librarians competence for digital questions and digital help at the library related to the democracy mission. Because of the phenomengraphical approach the study focused on the librarians experience of digital questions as a phenomenon rather than on describing the digital activities the libraries offers itself. The result showed, among other things, that the librarians in this study experience digital help at libraries as an important task and describes it as relevant for the libraries mission of prevent digital alienation. The informants also problematize banking issues as a phenomenon at libraries in the light of legal and ethical dilemmas.