Högskolebibliotekens synlighet i lärosätenas strategidokument
En innehållsanalys av högskolornas strategiska dokument och bibliotekens strategiska planer
The aim of this master's thesis is to describe the visibility of the university libraries in the strategic documents from the actual universities to which they belong. And also, the image of themselves they send out, are examined. By examining different kinds of descriptions we want to get a clearer picture of how and in what amount the libraries are mentioned in highest level strategies. By doing this we expect to find out the libraries' strategic role in higher education and research. The research questions are: What role and function are assigned to the university libraries in strategies created by the schools' highest administrative levels? How do the libraries present themselves in their own strategies? The approach is cross sectional and the time frame is year 2008. The methodological basis is a content analysis. The results are discussed in the light of theories of strategic planning. The findings show that the university libraries are not as frequently represented in the universities' highest level strategic documents as we anticipated, thinking that the importance of libraries for the universities would be shown clearly in the documents. The content analysis was used to classify the findings in the library plans. We found four main categories in the material: organization, information, competence and locality. The most important role given to the university libraries seem to be the organizational one meaning to support students, teachers and scientists in their daily work and supply of needed information, when studying the view of the highest administrative level.