Environmental work at libraries : A comparative study of three public libraries’ outer environmental work

A trend since the early 90’s has been that some public libraries offer a special shelf containing environmental information to the community, but it seems as though the subject has been overlooked by the literature and the science community. The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to study how three independent public libraries work with environmental information that is made available to the community. The following questions were addressed: 1) Which arguments can be found as to why the libraries offer this activity? 2) How does the environmental work at the public libraries look and what does it contain of? 3) Are there any similarities or differences in this work between the three libraries?To answer these questions interviews with librarians were carried out; observations were made to complement the interviews. Kathryn Miller’s theory “the libraries green role” (2010) was used to identify which roles the libraries played in the local community. Miller suggests that there are two possible roles that the library can play in order to contribute to the greening of the community: that of an environmental leader and/or environmental educator. The results showed that the libraries environmental work differed to some extent but was largely similar. The arguments behind the activity were found to be democracy and education. The libraries were in larger extent identified to act as an environmental educator than an environmental leader.Program: Bibliotekari