PARS PRO TOTO? Tillgång till Internet som en del av tillgängligheten på sex folkbibliotek
Internet policiesHumanitiesDemocracyPublic librariesDemokratiInternetFolkbibliotekHumanioraSocial Sciences
Internet access has been a part of the range in public libraries for approximately a decade. The Swedish municipals, in charge of the public libraries, and the libraries themselves, have a great deal of saying in how they should be run, what to offer the public, how many hours they have to stay open etcetera. The Library law is very vague on many things, including public Internet access. Even though Sweden is ranked as first runner up worldwide when it comes to Internet penetration among the population (Internet World Stats 2007), approximately twenty percent in the 16-74 age group does not have Internet access at home, at work or at school (SCB 2006a). In this master thesis we try to determine, through personal interviews, how six of those in charge feel about Internet at their libraries, all located in medium-sized municipals (20 000 ? 40 000 inhabitants), why they have chosen the rules and regulations they have and their thoughts about what they consider to be the most important assignment of public libraries. We also looked at what their home pages had to say about Internet. In addition to this, we also made first hand observations at the libraries in question. Even though the rules and regulations of each individual library differentiated from the others, the core of the traditional values of public libraries was dominant in all of them. To prevent users from accessing controversial web pages, half of them had installed filters. A third charged a fee for anything but strict ?information seeking?. Also, despite of expressing the importance of quality education in Internet usage, none of the libraries in our study offered their users this service.