”För den intresserade allmänheten” : En undersökning av hur tre specialsamlingar visas upp på Instagram

Sammanfattning: The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine how social media, specifically Instagram, is utilized in three special collections libraries in Sweden. The intent is to understand why Instagram is a plausible platform for the purpose of showcasing the libraries’ cultural heritage collections, how this is done and who the target audience is. The theoretical framework for this study is based on Roland Barthes’s visual semiotic terms denotation and connotation. The study also applies Lorri Mon’s analytical tools when examining how libraries can use social media in a successful manner. The three selected libraries are Uppsala University Library, Lund University Library and Roggebiblioteket. Six Instagram posts, between October 2018 and Mars 2019, from each library are analyzed, and e-mail interviews have been conducted with the librarians behind the accounts. Finally, the results are compared to showcase their differences and similarities, but also to compare them to previous studies on social media use in libraries. The results show that Instagram is used to display the libraries’ cultural heritage and make the collections more approachable to the general public – specifically to foreign researchers. The librarians also use Instagram as a platform to connect with other cultural heritage institutions and librarians all over the world. Through publishing esthetically pleasing pictures of old historical books, maps and other materials, they want to attract new users and put their library on the map. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.