Livslångt lärande och folkbibliotek
The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate and analyse how the concept of lifelong learning is expressed in political documents concerning public libraries and education and how it can be related to earlier concepts of education within the discourse of public libraries. Focus is the official approach to the concept of lifelong learning and public library. The documents examined contain the political aims for education and culture policy on a national and local level. The theories used in the study concern the background and meaning of the concept of lifelong learning, they describe public libraries and their earlier perspectives of education and they also give a picture of practices of governing within the framework of public libraries. The purpose is to see how the speech in the documents is reflected in discourses of society and public library. The procedure is inspired by critical discourse analysis as described by Norman Fairclough. According to this a three-dimensional analytical framework is used. This means that discourse is regarded as text, as discourse practice and as socioculture practice. The result of the study is that there are many similarities between the concept of lifelong learning and earlier concepts of education. What differs is that lifelong learning is strongly characterized by the theories about knowledge society and discourses of marketization. The emphasis on the lifelong and lifewide perspective and the underlying motives for this can be regarded as new elements in the view of education.