"Det är mesigt att läsa om musik" : En studie av musikintresserade människors informationsvanor

Sammanfattning: The aim of this thesis is to investigate what information needs arise from the interest in music, which sources are preferred, how this information is sought and what part does the public library play in providing music materials. Brenda Dervin`s Sense-Making theory is what serves as a theoretic framework for this study. A qualitative approach was undertaken in the investigation and nine interviews were conducted with people interested in music. Findings indicate that different ways of acquiring information are used depending on the situation in which the information is needed and also what kinds of music people prefer. The main findings of this study suggest that people interested in music are keen to constantly discover new music to perform or listen to. Information seeking seems to be mainly performed by monitoring known dependable sources and information providers used include newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and the Internet. Information to try helping decide whether certain music is worth exploring further is often sought by browsing musicrecordings or taking advice from friends, family and other trusted sources. Very highly appreciated sources overall are family, friends and other persons known to have expertise knowledge. Internet seems to be used both as a news provider and for searching reference information. When needing specialised knowledge or reference information, dictionaries, websites or people with known specialknowledge are often preferred. Barriers experienced are of financial and cognitive nature and also caused by an interest in music of less well-known genres. Libraries seemed to be used mainly for borrowing sheet music or lyrics and not so much for their record collections.