The art of making the right choices : A discourse analysis of the debates on collection development in Swedish libraries 2016-2018

The aim of this thesis is to examine the debates and discourses in Swedish media about the collection development and handling of controversial content in public libraries 2016–2018. The debates broke out after a couple of libraries chose to refuse purchase proposals regarding books and newspapers considered as controversial. Some libraries and librarians were in turn accused of censorship and making decisions based on political views when refusing these proposals. Questions posed in this study are: What discourses can be found in the debates about controversial content and collection development in public libraries? What views of the public libraries are expressed in the debates? What views of collection development in public libraries are expressed in the debates? What concepts, arguments and expressions appears in the debates, and what significance and meaning do they get in the discourses? Which subject positions appears in the debate? The theoretical and methodological framework is based on Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory. The empirical material consists of 22 articles derived from Swedish newspapers, news outlets and library journals. The analyze reveals three discourses: a freedom of information discourse, a profession discourse and a collection normative discourse. The freedom of information discourse represents a view that public libraries should be neutral and objective in their work with collection development and serve the users with whatever they ask for and not base their decisions on political views or other values. In the profession discourse they argue for the importance of librarian’s professional considerations and following policies, guidelines and laws when working with collection development. In the collection normative discourse, they question the imposed neutrality on libraries and argue for greater freedom of action when dealing with controversial content that might undermine human rights and the idea that all humans are equal