”I’m not going to sit at home knitting” : A study of six newly retired peoples information needs and library habits.

This study is about information needs and library habits among newly retired people. The purpose of this master thesis is to examine the affective and cognitive needs that come with retirement. In what way do the information needs of this group change due to retirement? In order to answer this question we make use of two theoretical models; Role theory and Wilson’s model of information needs. When it comes to library habits, we use Andersson and Skot-Hansens model to examine how newly retired people use the library now and how they could use it on basis of their needs in their new role. The method used in this study is qualitative; interviews are done with six newly retired people. The results show that newly retired people have a cognitive need to create meaning in their lives and an affective need of being needed to compensate for their loss of work role. These needs do not however create that many information needs. The newly retired people who were interviewed consider that they already know everything that they need to know, especially when it comes to information about their interests, which they have been into for many years. If there is something they need to know there tends not to be a problem finding information about it. The library is used as a centre of knowledge, for example newspaper-reading, and as a centre of culture, for example book borrowing.Uppsatsnivå: