…pleasentries first and then you can get down to business… A study on the subject of personal encounters at public libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the view on the personal encounter between staff and visitors in public libraries in order to detect possible differences between the two groups in order to see if the personal encounter as such could be used in order to market libraries. We believe that social competence must interact with the initial personal encounter in order for the visitor to experience the visit as positive. We have based the theoretical framework on Erving Goffman’s theory on social interaction, as well as on Christian Grönroos’ theory on quality of service and marketing. We use the following questions: How do library staff view the personal encounter? How do library visitors view the personal encounter? How does the library staff’s treatment affect the visitor’s view of the library?Are there any differences in view between visitors and staff concerning the personal encounter? If so, what kind of differences are they? Using qualitative interviews, we have interviewed nine visitors and six staff members at two public libraries. The visitors believe that the librarian should be friendly, helpful, well informed and available in order for the personal encounter to be perceived as positive. The interviewed staff believes that personal encounter plays a central part in how their work and that their treatment can be conclusive in the visitor’s perception of the library. The conclusions of the study say that the staff’s treatment of the visitors could function as both good and bad marketing for the library, depending on the visitor’s experience.Uppsatsnivå: