Mellan beroende och autonomi. En fallstudie av biblioteken i Flisby och Lofta kommuner

Sammanfattning: The aim of our Master´s thesis is to investigate the development of the different libraries in the former communities of Flisby and Lofta during the former part of the twentieth century. We ask the following questions:How did the libraries in Flisby and Lofta develop between the years of 1905 and 1952?How can we understand the libraries’ dependency of funding of different kinds? We have used case study as a method, and we have adopted a source criticism approach. We have mainly used our local archives and among other things we have investigated various sorts of protocols, annual reports, auditor’s reports and the accounts that were sent to the Board of Education. We have also visited the Government Archives, located in Stockholm. We have worked with the theory of Geir Vestheim, the cultural/political triangle, but we have modified it so that we only use two of the three corners of this triangle, and these are the economical/political system and the producers of culture and the disseminators or mediators of culture. We use Vestheim’s model of the different fields of tension between the economical/political system and the mediators of culture as well. We do this in order to see how the different libraries and the people involved in their maintenance were dependant of various kinds of funding, and to see what kinds of roles the people running the libraries played. We have come to the conclusion that the field of tension has increased, as the governmental regulation has grown stronger.