Public librarians professional identities and self-images : A study of public librarians perceptions about the library profession in Kronoberg, Sweden

This essay explores and analyzes how public librarians in Kronoberg, Sweden understands their work and their profession. With these understandings the author wants to approach an empirical description of the professional practices and self-images of public librarians. The method has been based on seven interviews, where the librarians have discussed their professional practice, their knowledge and their education, and reflecting on how they are perceived by a wider public. Empirically, this gives us a self-image of librarians who is perceived to be cultural and intellectual professionals who works with social promotion and stands up for democratic values. Culture-oriented librarians use this self-image as an ideal type in their professional practice and focus on reading and culture intermediation, while information and technology-oriented librarians use this self-image as a prototype, and sees the library profession as a practice that also contains many kinds of social aspects, and here choose to focus on service and information intermediation. To give a theoretical understanding of the empirical material the author has used a theoretical framework based on theories about eight librarian-identities from the scientists Anders Ørom, Trine Schreiber and Olof Sundin. The author has identified four of these identities in the material. Theoretically, this gives us four different kinds of identities: The intermediary of culture, the social worker, the intermediary of information and the information organizer. Together, the four identities represents the multifaceted contents in public librarians professional practices. The occupational content that formed the identities since the beginning of the 1990s has in relation to the study’s empirical findings been modified and made more nuanced by the author. This essay therefore presents four librarian-identities that serves to constitute a conceptual apparatus for public librarians to engage in their identity creation. They can also use them to describe what makes public librarians to what they are