Skämtlekar och Elvis Presleyskivor - ett sätt att få kontakt med ungdomar. Diskurser om ungdomar och ungdomsverksamhet i Biblioteksbladet 1916-2005
The aim of this essay is to examine different discourses concerning adolescents and library youth services that can be identified in the material. 73 articles from the Swedish library journal, Biblioteksbladet, were analysed trough a model. The different articles were all published between 1916 and 2005. The analysis revealed a result that consists of four discourses about adolescents and youth services at different libraries between 1916 and 2005: the library as fostering discourse, a new era discourse, the visiting activities discourse and the young adult discourse. The library as fostering discourse is based on the idea that the library itself doesnt need to change the service to adolescents, instead the adolescents are supposed to change into good library users. In the new era discourse the roles are opposite. Here the library guides its services according to the recreational interests of the adolescents. In the visiting activities discourse, the roles of the libraries are to focus on the adolescents that are categorized as nonusers and try to bring them to the library. In the young adult discourse the library is focused on more of traditional library services such as stock and loan and not so much on extension works or visiting activities. An interesting observation that we have noticed during the analysis is the complexity in the relations between the library and adolescents the problems in this relation never seems to vanish. Already in the library as fostering discourse these problems are noticed, and after that we see them in every discourse. The types of problems are changing, but the basis is still the same relations between libraries and adolescents are problematic. It seems difficult for the libraries to come to a solution regarding youth services.