Efficiency or discussion first? : Librarians’ thoughts about public libraries’ collections

The aim of this Bachelor’s thesis is to find out what librarians think about the public libraries’ collections. How do they want to develop their collection and what do they want the collection to offer society?Sanna Talja has developed a theory about different attitudes regarding collection development. These are named ”the general education repertoire”, ”the alternative repertoire” and ”the demand repertoire”. In the analysis of this study, I use these three attitudes to structure the answers from my own interviews.To investigate how librarians think about the public libraries’ collections, I made telephone interviews with six librarians at six different libraries. In these interviews, I asked the librarians how they work with selection and acquisitions at their library, and about their personal attitude regarding the library’s collection.It seems like librarians have a strong will to form a collection that suits everyone. My conclusion is that librarians’ thoughts on what they want their collection to offer society, does not actually match how they practically work to develop their collections. I also suggest that librarians need to have more discussion about these thoughts than they do now.Program: Bibliotekari