Biblioteket som oas, upplevelsecenter eller brobyggare? : En analys av den samtida biblioteksdebatten kring bibliotekets funktion som mötesplats.

This essay takes its point of departure in the need for modern day public libraries to legitimize their place in today’s society. Societal changes call for constant reinvention of libraries and as part of this reinvention, new light is being shed on the public library’s role as a meeting place. By investigating contemporary debate articles published in Bibliotek i samhälle and Biblioteksbladet, two major Swedish library magazines, this essay aims to categorize and compare different conceptions of the library’s function as a meeting place. With the four-space model as theoretical framework and by using argumentation analysis the study is executed in two steps. The first part determines if the articles are pro or con the changes in the organization and if the arguments in the articles are valid or not. The second part places the articles in a Venn-diagram, which initiates further discussion. In conclusion we have found that rather than focusing on the function as meeting place, libraries may gain legitimacy by finding their own niche