“Floating is more chaotic, so to speak.” : A qualitative interview study about floating collections with seven public librarians in the city of Gothenburg.

In 2011 the public libraries of Gothenburg city implemented so-called floating collections. In floating collections the items are not housed permanently at a specific library instead they move between libraries depending on where the item is picked up and left off. Therefore, floating collections are controlled by the library users. Making it a part of a user-centered trend found within Swedish libraries. Literature both praise the benefits with floating as well as highlighting the risks of unpredicted challenges. In the case of Gothenburg city, the public library’s collection management and development has caused debate in the media. Especially the library staff has expressed dissatisfaction. In this thesis seven public librarians have been interviewed about how they perceive working with floating collections, the benefits and drawbacks, as well as the larger effects it has on society. They express certain positives that mainly benefit active and knowledgeable users. One of the greatest drawbacks of flowing collections is the uneven flow between libraries. It leads to stagnated pools of items in some areas and draught in others. The librarians also feel they have been excluded in the process of implementing floating collections as well as during further centralization of the collection management in 2022. The centralization and user centered perspective have decreased the librarian’s control and knowledge of the collection. The data from the interviews has been analyzed in relation to existing literature on floating collections and with the perspective of following theoretical concepts: democratic equality, segregation, periphery and peripheralization. I conclude that the drawbacks of floating collections outweigh the benefits from an equality point of view. The structures of floating collections do not take the full spectrum of library users into consideration, which connects to an uneven flow of items in the city. Items tend to flow from socioeconomic peripheries to socioeconomic centers which increases the peripheralization and segregation of Gothenburg city. The public libraries of Gothenburg need to reconsider their collection management and readjust the structures to create more equal conditions for all users regardless of digital knowledge, age, and other social factors. This includes giving the librarians increased influence over the collections to increase and practice their knowledge. The librarians should also be encouraged to maintain the local perspective at each library while simultaneously seeing to the needs of the city as a whole. The users’ needs could still be the center of the system without being at the expense of the librarian’s ability to influence the collection. Many users are dependent on the librarians to use, affect and be inspired by the collection. This is a two years master's thesis in Library and information science