Det blir liksom öststat va! ? Om litteraturstödda titlar, förvärv och förmedling av skönlitteratur på 5 folkbibliotek
The aim of this study is to investigate librarians? opinions about books supported by the government and delivered for free to the main public libraries in every community. The study is also investigating how the governmentally supported books affect the process of buying books for the public libraries and how the librarians think about quality and mediation in the acquisition. The analysis is based upon interviews with six librarians that are responsible for the purchasing at five main libraries in small communities in the South of Sweden. The results from the interviews are discussed and analyzed from the perspective of mediation. Two authors who focus on this theory are the Norwegians Jofrid Karner Smidt and Åse Kristine Tveit. Smidt has done her own investigation among the staff at Norwegian libraries and Tveit is presenting a model with four types of intermediary. Some of these types have been found in the results of this investigation. The interviews show that the librarians have very different opinions concerning the governmentally supported books, but no one is all positive or all negative. None of the respondents are very anxious to mediate a certain book or a certain type of books; their main concern is that people read in the first place. The main things that are affecting the decisions in the process of buying books are inquiries from the borrowers and the governmentally supported books are having very little influence in the process.