Sjukhusbibliotekarier : En undersökning om hur sjukhusbibliotekarier som möter barn arbetar och uppfattar sin yrkesroll

The aim of this Bachelor's thesis is to examine how hospital librarians, who work with children, perceive their working practices and occupational role. A method of semi-structured interviews was used to provide data for analysis. Six hospital librarians, employed in five different hospitals, were interviewed. The collected data was examined by using both a content analysis and a theory-based analysis. The theoretical analysis is based on Øroms (1993) definition of the diverse occupational identities of a librarian: facilitator of culture, subject specialist, documentarist and social worker, along with two bibliotherapeutic identities from Brewsters (2011) definition of creative and informal bibliotherapy. Typical for all of the hospital librarians interviewed was that they see their work and occupational role largely based on the concepts of literature and reading as well as upon a bibliotherapeutic aspect. These two directions are also distinctly apparent in their method of work. The first aspect is based on the librarians’ role as a facilitator of culture: providing access to literature through their knowledge of literature and the collection of books in the hospital library; providing discussion and guidance to patients, relatives and hospital personnel. The second aspect is the bibliotherapeutic role that systematically promotes the patient’s health and wellbeing by their engagement with literature. The librarians consider pro-active contact with patients and relatives a most important part of their work and, subsequently, it is a main contributing factor in their professional identity. On the other hand, systematic and practical aspects of their work play a less significant role in forming their identity. Hospital librarians have a close working relationship with play therapy departments and hospital schools. Similar cooperation with medical staff is, however, not as well developed