A study of public libriarians’ competences based on interviews with library users and librarians

The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine what expectations a few, adult, frequent library users have on librarians' competences at a specific library. We also aim to compare how well the library users' expectations relates to how the librarians describe their own competences.The method used to gather the empirical information in this study is the qualitative semi-structured interview. We interviewed six library users and the four librarians who are employed at the library where we placed our study. The results of our interviews were analyzed with the help of a model based on Anders Ørom’s librarian identities. The model was further developed by us with the addition of another identity which we named the affective and social identity.The conclusions of this study are that the library users' expectations are based on their individual library needs which differ from person to person. Individually they don´t relate to all of the competences that the librarians describe, but the expectations from the user informants as a group meet the librarians' descriptions fairly well. Both groups of informants emphasize that the affective and social identity is important for the librarians to recognize to be able to meet the expectations of the library users. Other competences that the users expect the librarians to have is competences about literature, IT, general and special education and the way the library's books are organized.Program: Bibliotekari