Folkbiblioteket en bildande samhällsinstitution i framtiden?
This masters thesis aims at a discussion about whether the public library will be an educating and cultivating society institution in the future. The method used is a combination of interviews with library staff in leading position and studies of the public librarys relationship to cultivation and adult education in a changeable society. The work concentrates on two main questions. One is about what, and in which way, changes, that are important for the public library and that take place in society now or within the next ten years, affect the future activities of the library. The other is about the public librarys relationship to cultivation in general and in the future. The thesis is divided into three main parts. Part one is a theoretical framework, dealing with the questions about what cultivation is, what the public librarys relationship to adult education looks like, what the future society will look like, and cultivation in the present and the future society. The second part deals with the question about future public library activities, and presents the result from the empirical and qualitative interviews with library staff in leading position in three public libraries. Part three relates the interview result to the theoretical questions through interpretation and analysis, and leads to the aimed discussion. I have come to the conclusion that the public library most likely will be an educating and cultivating institution in the future society, since there probably will be a strong need for knowledge. However, right now the society goes through major changes, which, among other things, make plenty of different ways of life possible. This makes it difficult yet to see exactly what the future cultivation will look like, and with it follows probably that there will also be many different kinds of cultivation, according to different peoples needs. Though there seem to be some particular questions, that are important for the future public library, concerning how to work against segregation and how to find its place in a society with increasing demands for knowledge, technology, and information handling.