Privatisering av folkbibliotek skildrat i politiska dokument under 1990-talet
This masters thesis is a study of official political documents in order to discuss privatisation and the Swedish public libraries. In the 1990s public libraries became placed on contractors, and that was said to be one form of privatisation. The main issue for this study concerns driving forces and obstacles for privatisation of public libraries. Another issue concerns advantages and risks. We will also discuss how the future of public libraries will be in this context. The method for this study is document analyses and only political documents are used. The theoretical frame is based on the perception that culture has two different values one democratic and one economic. One driving force that leads to privatisation is the re-organisation of the municipal activity that occurred due to their increased self-government in the early 90s. As an economic driving force competition can be seen as the premier one. Obstacles contain mainly of laws, but the goals of cultural policy can also be seen as an obstacle. Advantages with privatisation can be increased efficiency, increased creativity and reduced costs, and risks can be that the cultural policy reduces its influence and that the public library activity becomes undermined. There can also be juridical risks concerning employees and insight in the activity. One conclusion is that public libraries placed on contractors are a possible development for the future but that there are laws that will prevent privatisation of the public libraries.