"Att ta bort skymmarna" - en intervjuundersökning av bibliotekschefers syn på gallring på folkbibliotek
The aim of this Bachelor's thesis is to examine library directors'views on weeding in Swedish public libraries. The researchquestions posed are: What formal goals and criteria govern theweeding process?; How are these goals and criteria accountedfor?; How do the library directors view the weeding in relationto the roles of the collections?The theoretical framework consists of a division of weedingcriteria inspired by Stanley J. Slote, and a slight adaptation ofMichael K. Buckland's roles of collections. The empiricalmaterial was gathered through semistructured interviews withlibrary directors and analyzed using the above theories asstructural tools.The results show that written guidelines and criteria are deemedunnecessary and awkward and are consequently not used. Theweeding process described mainly uses circulation-based liststo identify weeding candidates, which are then judged on anindividual basis using a mixture of subjective and objectivecriteria. The primary motives for weeding are that the materialshould be up-to-date and inviting to the users. Weeding isregarded as important for the distributing role of thecollections. Unused material is viewed as problematic as itprevents browsing users from finding material that interestthem. Weeding decisions invoking the archival andbibliographical roles of the collections are seen as hard tojustify when conflicting with the distributing role. Adiscrepancy between an objective and a subjective stancetowards the weeding process is prominent in much of thelibrary directors' reasoning.