Folkbiblioteken i planer : En diskursanalytisk studie av kultur- och biblioteksplaner

Sammanfattning: This thesis has examined regional and municipal cultural policy documents and public library policy documents. The purpose of the study was to examine and discus which preconceptions about the public library the policy documents contains. The chosen method and theory to achieve this purpose was discourse analysis, new institutional theory was applied in order to discuss the preconceptions that the discourse analysis made visible. The regional and municipal cultural policy documents did not mention the public library as much as expected. The findings from the analysis show that the discourses identified in the policy documents were relatively similar. The discourses found in the regional cultural policy documents were: the literary discourse, the multifunctional discourse and the societal development discourse. Only the multifunctional discourse was identified in the municipal cultural policy documents. In the public library policy documents four discourses where identified: the literary discourse, the information-conveying discourse, the multifunctional discourse and the societal development discourse. The preconception that where made visible during the discourse analysis can be considered as a result of reproduction of other policy documents from the cultural policy field. According to institutional theory this can be viewed as isomorfism, and the policy documents are used to achieve legitimacy. In order to survive the regions, municipalities and public libraries reproduce values, norms and demands from the cultural policy field. During the analysis it became clear that there were two different logics present in the cultural and library policy documents: a market based logic and library logic. This is a two years master´s thesis in Library and Informations Science.