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Our state of emergency is good - is the public library prepared for the future?Our state of emergency is good! These are the words spoken by Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson in 1939. He claimed that Sweden had nothing to fear from a future war, we were safe. Today we know it was not so. Is this the situation for Swedish public library of today? Is the public library ready to face the future, or is it only fancy words?We have to form the future, not let the future form us. There have been tremendous changes within the information technology during the last 30 years. There are several information retrieval systems in our society. The public library is one of them. Libraries can supply information through time (the archive function) and space (the lending- and allocation function). But one fail to serve the public if one does not focus on retrieval and users. The purpose of this study is to find out whether Swedish public library today is prepared for the future. We did our research at six different public libraries in thinly populated areas. The study is divided into two parts. The first is a theoretical background to point out how things could be in a perfect world. And the second part is the results of interviews with library managers and our analysis. We have emphasised consciousness, awareness and will for the purpose of manage a strategy for the future. We found that the preparedness is low. The public library has difficulties in knowing what to do and how to do it and how to find the time.