A library for everyone? : The public library, users and accessibility

The public library is said to play an important role when it comes to reducing inequalities in society. According to the Library law, the public library is supposed to be accessible for everyone. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the public library’s relation to users and the public library’s accessibility for different categories of users. It is done through a qualitative text analysis of articles in the library journal Biblioteksbladet, applying an intersectional theorethical framework. The three most frequently occurring categories of users were selected for the analysis: users with norm breaking ethnicity, users in social deprivation and users with norm breaking sexual orientation/gender identity. According to the result of the thesis, problems can be found in parts of the relation between the public library and the selected groups of users. A lack of accessibility, regarding the public library’s activities, exists at some level in at least two of the three categories.