The librarian and a new electronic reference service The project and the chat-reference service Speak instantly to a librarian

This master thesis is a study of a new electronic library reference service-project called Speak instantly to a librarian and the purpose of the thesis is to investigate a new electronic reference service and how the librarians who work with it experience it. This should be seen from an informational society point of view. The study is conducted from two questions: - What needs do the libraries have and how do they argue for the project and the chat-reference service Speak instantly to a librarian? - How do the librarians experience the personal work situation in the new reference service, and its use of chat technology? Together with interviews of a selected group of librarians from the public libraries of Göteborg, Malmö, Nacka and Stockholm, this thesis includes aspects such as the theory of the informational society by Manuel Castells, as well as literary studies of the history of library reference, the development of electronic reference service and the virtual library, and the background and the beginning of the studied project Speak instantly to a librarian. The thesis also contains an overlook of other similar library projects in the United States of America. The focus of the analysis lays in comparing the results from the interviews with the literary studies, the library projects from the US and Castells theory of the informational society.Uppsatsnivå: