”Don’t hang about!” A study of policies of personal encounter at Swedish public libraries

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to survey what personal encounter at the library can signify, and to examine Swedish public libraries’ policies for personal encounter. The posed questions are: What does personal encounter at the library signify? How are users and library staff represented in the collected policies? What do the policies say about digital encounter? 290 e-mail queries were sent to Swedish public libraries in May 2010. Of 140 responses, 107 stated that they did not have a written policy on personal encounter. 33 libraries had policies and these were collected and examined. The methods used are text analysis and policy analysis. The conclusions are that the policies are usually written with the goal to maintain a high standard of behavioral performance amongst library staff. The policies also aim at providing a joint approach to personal encounter. Users and staff are mainly described as working in a team. The most frequent way to describe how staff should behave is with respect. The user is, on the other hand, sometimes described as difficult and demanding. I take that down to the fact that a great deal of the policies are concerned with problems that can arise in the meeting between user and staff. To mention difficult users in the policies does not necessarily mean that users in general are considered difficult. Only few of the policies mention digital encounter.Program: Bibliotekari