A place you can visit, just to sit down and read and get away from everything : - a qualitative study of young people's views of the public library in a rural community

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to study what views 15-16 years old teenagers, living in the Swedish countryside, have about public libraries. The method chosen for this study is focus group interviews with both library users and none-library users included. A theoretical method called The four spaces (Jochumsen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen & Skot-Hansen, 2012) has been used to analyse the empirical material.15 teenagers were part of this study and the result shows that the teenagers have a traditional view of public libraries, which means that they only see it as a place to borrow books and where one has to be quiet in order to not disturb other visitors. A conclusion is that if teenagers living in the countryside are to change their views about public libraries, the public libraries need to change their activities for this particular age group. Because today they feel like it’s not the most interesting place to visit