New or Old? : a study of the public libraries in Hässleholm and Kristianstad

The purpose of this essay is to examine how a newly built library and an old library from the sixties work out of an experience and feeling oriented view. Are the fundamental conditions of an old library compatible with the library standards of today? To be able to carry out this examination we have chosen two rather small Swedish libraries. One is the public library of Hässleholm, which opened in the year 2000, and the other is the public library of Kristianstad opened in 1965. The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists of literature studies and qualitative observations and interviews. The first main chapters of this essay are an overview of literature found on the subject. This is followed by a chapter including empirical material, were our libraries are introduced. In the discussion we reason about what we found from our literature studies and combine this with our findings from our empirical studies. Our conclusion is that both our two libraries succeed in satisfying the demands of a library today. The library in Kristianstad has, due to age and shortage of space, problems with operating the library. In Hässleholm the localities are furnished more from an ornamental than a functional point of view. This leads to a suboptimal utilization of the premises.Uppsatsnivå: