Librarians educational practices in their work against digital inequality : The new role of librarians

This paper aims to identify and bring light to librarians different educational practices in their work to fight digital inequality in society. The study uses methods such as observations and interviews to identify which practices the librarians most commonly use when providing digital aid and how these can be understood, how the librarians themselves reflect on these practices, and what differs in their reflections and their actions. After collecting our empirical data we conducted a qualitative content analysis using concepts from Säljös theory of sociocultural perspective on learning, where we identified concepts such as awareness, tools, and communication as the most central aspects of these educational practices. By doing this we identified three different sub-practices which together make up what we define as an educational practice. These were approaching practices, conveying practices and outreach practices. These practices were heavily influenced by the concepts of awareness and communication, and as such we could also see how the librarians showed a great deal of awareness concerning the different existing inequalities in society, and thus emphasised the democratic importance of their work. We also found that there were no greater differences in the way they reflected about their practices, and the way in which they actually conducted their work. However, we did find that the main differences instead were in regard to the amount of reflection that they did. Finally we could also see how the librarians mostly had to make do with what they had in terms of their own competencies due to this educational role being relatively new to the librarian. It is therefore our hope that this essay can help inspire future research and endeavours in this field to help develop these practices, and strengthen the role of librarians to better combat digital inequality