“The world is full of stories” : A study of the acquisition of film for children and young adults.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how acquisition of film for children and young adults in public libraries is carried out. The aim is to investigate why the librarians think a library should have film, if the librarians are bound by acquisition policies and where they retrieve information about films. We also want to know where the films are bought, how the distributors are perceived and how the librarians see their own sphere of competence. The thesis is a qualitative study and is based on interviews with children’s librarians in six public libraries. The interviews were analyzed with the help of three phases established by George Rehrauer and four key words presented by Svensk Biblioteksförening. The results show that the librarians considered it a matter of course that their library should have films. It was their obligation to be up to date with new technology. Although most of the libraries had no official acquisition policy they often had an unofficial one that was implemented by staff media meetings. The librarians searched for suitable films by reviews in newspapers, magazines and on the Internet. Suggestions from patrons were also highly regarded. The distributors were seen as having improved, but still had not a satisfactory range of films. Only one of the librarians had had education about film acquisition. The others referred to lack of time. They felt, however, that their own sphere of competence was big enough