From a reading society to a municipal library : The library history of Skövde 1830-1940

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to describe the development of the most important libraries in Skövde, starting from 1830. We conclude our examination about 1940, when the municipal library has been active for almost ten years, and the libraries started by the temperance and working-class movements have been deposited at the municipal library. In order to explain this process we describe the development of the Swedish public library and its predecessors, such as reading societies and the popular national movements’ libraries, as a background and comparison to the early libraries in Skövde. We describe the most significant libraries that existed in Skövde during this period, starting with a reading society in 1830. We continue with a commercial lending library and a couple of popular national movements’ libraries, before we discuss the municipal library. The municipal library in Skövde opened quite late, almost 15 years after the decision in the municipal council. We examine what happened in the meantime, and introduce Major Eric Uggla who played an important part in this process. To explain his role in this development, we have done a simplified structure/actor analysis, based on a model by Lennart Lundquist, professor of political science.Uppsatsnivå: