Vad är skyltning egentligen bra för? En kvalitativ studie om användarupplevelser kring skyltning

Sammanfattning: Book displays in public libraries are a common occurrence in library users’ public library experience. Yet, book displays, and how library users experience them, are not a common occurrence within library and information science research. The purpose of this essay is therefore to create an understanding about how library users at public libraries experience and interact with displays in public libraries, with a focus on how the interplay between the library space and the display affects this. To answer this, I have conducted interviews with library users and library personnel, as well as observations of library users, at Lund city library and Malmö city library. To analyse the material, I have made use of the spatial triad-model in Henri Lefebvre’s The Social Production of Space, as well as Actor-Network Theory. What I found is that public library users make use of library display in a range of different ways. Display seems to, superficially, work as a tool for the library to raise their check-out numbers. Through a deeper analysis, users seem to connect displays to older ideas of the public library as a hub for “good literature”, which lends an air of authority to both the display and practices around the display. Many users therefore trust the displays to serve as reference librarians - to inspire them and provide them with “good literature”. This reference work also stretches to providing a sort of guidance in the room and in the stacks. This service that the display provides the users with is also subject to failure, which can result in the users being frustrated with the services the display is or is not able to provide. Beyond how the display can shape the user’s expectations of library services and library practice, it can also shape the user’s expectations of the library space and the institution itself.