What do the visitors actually do at the library? a user study conducted at Filipstads Bergslags Library.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate what the users/visitors do at the Filipstads Bergslags Library when they are there. The questions we asked were "What do the visitors do when they are at the library?" and "How do the visitors give priority to the librarys services?" From these two questions we asked a third "How do the visitors view the library and its functions and what function do they see as the most important to them?" The method we used was a user study and we did this at the request of the management at the library. A questionnaire was constructed and handed out in a pilot study. We made some changes in the questionnaire before we started to hand it out at the library. We received a total of 224 questionnaires during a two week period. We found that most of the visitors were very traditional in their tasks at the library. They borrowed books and other media and read newspapers and magazines. When we classified our findings in gender, age groups, highest education and occupation we found that men read more newspapers and magazines than women do. They, on the other hand, borrow more books than men and they also visited the library more often. Only 25% of the visitors used the library computers. Most of the participants in the study showed a low interest in the various arrangements and conveniences the library offered. The visitors were only interested in a few cultural arrangements such as author evenings. The two library functions that really stood out were the cultural function and the information function. Our conclusions are that the visitors at Filipstads Bergslags library are very traditional in their activities and that they look upon the library as a cultural and informational institution.Uppsatsnivå: