Mer reklam, tack, och gärna samhällsinformation : en studie om synlig- och tillgängliggörande av efemärt tryck vid svenska pliktbibliotek

Sammanfattning: The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate the choices that legal deposit libraries in Sweden make, during the process of collecting and displaying printed ephemera. The word “ephemera” originally derives from a Greek word simply meaning “short-lived” or “lasting only for one day”. The term “printed ephemera” thus refers to a wide range of different documents meant to be discarded after use, for instance posters, advertisements, pamphlets, post cards, maps, trade catalogues and so on. This material constitutes a major part of the printed cultural heritage of the nation and has a great potential as research material. Not many people know of the existence of these collections, though, or that the material is available to the public. The thesis focuses on the management of printed ephemera collections at two Swedish legal deposit libraries, The National Library of Sweden and Lund University Library. A number of choices made, and decisions taken, by the libraries have a crucial impact on what is being preserved for the future, what is being shown to the public and what is, on the contrary, made invisible. In addition to this primary part of the investigation, the thesis also looks at two other European libraries, The Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen and The British Library in London, in order to show alternative ways of dealing with collections of printed ephemera. Applying thoughts and theories of knowledge organization, this thesis further discusses different angles of the Swedish Legal Deposit Law, preservation of printed ephemera at the legal deposit libraries, classification of the material, cataloguing and digitization. The thesis demonstrates that the Swedish legal deposit law is in need of a revision to guarantee the preservation of all sorts of printed ephemera available today. The results of the investigation also show that the Legal Deposit Libraries of Sweden, required by law, preserve a wide range of material, but in many ways lack the resources to make the material visible. Although the collections are accessible, by way of the classification systems used when shelfing the material, only minor parts of the collections are visible in the library catalogues or as digital files. Digitizing printed ephemera is problematic due to costs, technical limitations and copyright restrictions but it can, and will, presumably be necessary in order to make fragile objects available. Cataloguing, on various bibliographic levels, the classified collections could on the other hand make a larger part of the preserved material a lot more visible, and thus also more accessible to the reader.