Musikwebb : a study with focus on music selection, library services and digitization

The aim of this master thesis is to examine the attitudes among library staff regarding a music downloading service called Musikwebb, which is available in many Swedish public libraries. It focuses on the impact of Musikwebb on the process of music selection, the relationship between Musikwebb and the digital development in public libraries and what service Musikwebb offers its users. The gathering of material was executed through focus group interviews with library staff in four libraries. This empirical material we divided in three categories: Music selection, The Library and its digital services, and Library services. We use the results of Sanna Talja’s discourse analysis regarding the relationship between Music, Culture and the Library to analyze our material. In addition we use Anders Forsslund’s master thesis which also is a discourse analysis concerning human and digital services in public libraries. Our findings include that library staff is ambivalent in their attitude towards Musikwebb. The benefits of Musikwebb comprise that the service offers a wide collection of music, prevents library staff from making uninformed or arbitrary selection of music and that it offers around-the-clock service to those who master ICT. The drawbacks of Musikwebb includes the fact that library staff lose control over the process of music selection, offers little service to those who do not master ICT and that digital services tends to undermine the traditional role of the public library. Despite this fact we also found that library staff think that the traditional and the digital library services should coexist.Uppsatsnivå: