“It is an occupational quandary” : mediation of fiction in a Swedish public library.

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine how librarians in a Swedish public library view and discuss mediation of fiction. The questions posed in this study are: How do the librarians want to work with mediation of fiction? What type of literature should be provided according to them? How do they express that they relate and should relate to their users? The theoretical starting-points are three categories extracted from Jofrid Karner Smidt’s doctor’s dissertation Mellom elite og publikum: the approach to users, strategies for mediation, and ideals for mediation. The empirical material was gathered through focus group interviews with librarians in a public library. This material was analyzed using the categories above. The results show that the librarians manifest a traditional view on mediation of fiction and the strategies used for mediation. The user group primarily discussed consists of readers of popular literature who are considered in need of help and guidance. The librarians have an ambition to improve the literary preferences of these users to what the librarians consider high quality literature. In contrast, they express a fear to be looked upon as condemning and therefore tend to suppress their personal literary views. The study poses questions about high versus low literary quality and whose needs should be addressed considering mediation of fiction. The result shows that the librarians focus solely on one of many user groups and therefore risk excluding other user groups.Uppsatsnivå: