Skönlitteratur på svenska folkbibliotek: En diskursanalys

Sammanfattning: The view on which kind of fiction that should be mediated to the public through the Swedish public library system has since the late 60´s been dominated by what in this Master’s thesis is called: ´the discourse on quality of literary fiction´. The aim of this thesis is to examine to which extent this discourse still plays an active role in the Swedish public library system or if that discourse has been replaced by a more market-led, demand responsive view, where the features of ´quality´ and ´culture´ have been downplayed and replaced by a ´customer’s service view´ on how and why fiction should be mediated to the public. The methodological and theoretical perspective in this thesis is led by the understanding of the discourse analysis in Michel Foucault’s ´The Archaeology of Knowledge´. The material of analysis has been the Swedish Government reports: (SOU) concerning the issues of mediating fiction. Another source of empirical material used in the study is a survey distributed to librarians throughout the country .The conclusion which I have been able to draw from the analysis of the textual material and the survey is that the discourse on mediating fiction has changed from the 70´s and 80´s ´quality view´ on how and why a non commercial cultural institution like the public library should mediate fiction, to a market-led ´customer’s service view´ on the public libraries functions, where the customer’s demand should be met even at the expense of the quality features of the fiction mediated.