Messengers of fiction : public librarians’ view on working with mediation of fiction

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to study how public librarians’ view mediation of fiction: the knowledge needed, the thoughts expressed about their own and other adults reading of fiction and how the informants define their roles as mediators of fiction. The method used was qualitative interviews with six librarians at main libraries in Swedish cities of different sizes. The theoretical starting points are Louise M. Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, Michail Bachtin’s theory of speech genres and Åse Tveit’s and Jofrid Karner Smidt’s theories about mediation of fiction. For the empirical material concerning the librarians knowledge in this field of the library work the theory of three different kinds of knowledge; episteme, techne and phronesis, was applied. Furthermore, the term communities of practice was used regarding how the knowledge is acquired. The results show that reading is regarded an important activity with various functions, which the informants reflect over in their work with fiction. Three roles as mediators of fiction can be identified, not excluding one another, but instead possible to combine. The role that emphasise dialog with users is viewed as very important and is also the role that can be seen to play a great part in the development of the work with mediation of fiction. The knowledge required for this part of the librarian profession is shown to be complex and acquired in different ways. Several ideas about how the work can develop in the future are expressed