How are Public Libraries Used? : A study of how the Physical Library Space is being used in the Public Library of Strängnäs, Sweden.

In our digitalized world, there are ongoing discussions about the public library as a physical place and if it still has a role in our society. Even though many public libraries in Sweden and other western countries are being closed because of political and economic cuts, people still visit the public library. This gives an indication that the library is important not only as a place to borrow books, but as a physical place. This study will try to find answers to how the library space is being used by the visitors by examining when people come to the library, what people do in the library and who these people are. To find answers to these questions, empirical data based upon observations of the library space has been collected. The method of observation used was the TTTmethod (Track the Traffic) developed by the Norwegian scientist Tord Høivik. The TTT-method is a simple method to observe how the different spaces of the library are being used by walking through all the spaces in the library whilst observing what activities are being done. This is repeated at certain times during the library’s opening hours and over a certain period. In this study, the observations were done in three different time-intervals during the day (morning, daytime and evening), over a twoweek period and resulted in 779 registered observations. These data will be analysed in relation to the four space-model developed by the Danish scientist Dorte Skot-Hansen. The model specifies four overall goals of the public library which are experience, involvement, empowerment and innovation and the different possibilities, described in the model as spaces, that the library can offer to fulfil these goals. These four spaces are inspiration, learning, meeting and performative space. In this study, the space that is mostly used, is knowledge, but in the daytime and the evening, the meeting space is also often used. The activities registered are mostly done by adult people. Children and young people are not often observed in the library-space, which gives an indication that this group, which is a priority in the Swedish library act, is not being attended to as it should be according to this. It is also a quite interesting result that activities done by young people often are activities done in a group of people.