This paper presents an analysis of how library professionals in Sweden and Denmark perceive the democratic role of the library profession in the polarised political landscape of today. Relating to research on the democratic role of libraries, professional ethics and cultural policies, empirical data was gathered through seven group interviews with library professionals from eleven local libraries in south Sweden and Jutland in Denmark. Results indicate a commonly perceived discrepancy between general formulations of values found in professional codes of ethics, and practical librarianship. Dealing with threats and challenges against liberal democratic values in the public library requires professional ethical considerations that in individual cases may question the need for value-neutrality among library professionals if the basic democratic mission of the library is to be upheld.

This article reports conclusions from a three-year research project on Swedish public libraries. The focus of the project is on librarians experience of libraries mission to promote democracy when democratic norms and values are challenged politically by radical right populism. Results of a longitudinal survey point to stability and lack of political interest over time, but increased societal polarization causes several ethical dilemmas for librarians. Examples of illegitimate political influence and librarians adapting to changes in the political climate call for renewed discussions on the professional role and understandings of democracy in library practice.

As the growing influence of the radical right turns cultural institutions into political symbols (Harding, 2021), online forums and social media are key venues for antagonistic outbursts directed at public libraries (Carlsson, Hanell & Hansson 2022). Trolling the Library aims to explore radical right digital attacks against public libraries, and is currently piloting different methods to analyse online comments and news items from the website SamNytt. This contribution outlines one intended deliverable of the project: a shareable workflow for the low-code tool KNIME (KoNstanz Information MinEr).

Low-code tools play an important role in making data analysis and visualization accessible to researchers and students with limited experience, or interest, in programming (see De Mauro, Marzoni & Walter, 2021). While low-code tools do introduce closed-box issues, they can still be considered important steppingstones towards computational approaches (Tyrkkö & Ihrmark, submitted). An additional benefit is the shareability of the workflow resulting from designing the method pipeline in tools such as KNIME or Orange. 

The specific workflow resulting from Trolling the Library contains sentiment analysis and topic modeling components. While limited in scope, the discussion of the workflow highlights both the benefits and drawbacks of low-code workflows as potential shareable resources for the digital humanities. This contribution focuses on the ease of use, possible obstacles from an unfamiliar user’s perspective, and the availability of appropriate resources for the platform. 

Works cited:

Carlsson, H., Hanell, F., & Hansson, J. (2022). ”Det känns som att jag bara

sitter och väntar på att det ska explodera”: politisk påverkan på de

kommunala folkbibliotekens verksamhet i sex sydsvenska regioner. Nordic

Journal of Library and Information Studies, 3(1), 26-43.

De Mauro Andrea, Francesco Marzoni & Andrew J. Walter. 2021. Data Analytics Made Easy: Analyze and present data to make informed decisions without writing any code. Packt Publishing

Harding, T. (2021). Culture wars? The (re) politicization of Swedish cultural

policy. Cultural Trends, 1-18.

Tyrkkö, J., & Ihrmark, D. Submitted. Low-code data science tools for linguistics: Swiss army knives or pretty black boxes? In Coats S. and V. Laippala (eds.) March of Data (Language, Data Science and Digital Humanities X). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to produce new knowledge about the positions that public libraries both take and are given in the conflicts over politics and identity that play out in contemporary cultural and library policy debates. Using conflicts over drag story hour at public libraries as case, the study seeks to contribute to an emerging body of research that delves into the challenges that public libraries as promoters of democracy are confronting in the conflictual political landscape of today.

Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents an analysis of debates reported in news articles concerning Drag story hour events held at Swedish public libraries. Utilizing the analytical lenses of discourse theory and plural agonistics, the analysis serves to make visible the lines of conflicts drawn in these debates – particularly focusing on the intersection of different meanings ascribed to the notion of the reading child, and how fear is constructed and used as an othering devise in these conflicts.

Findings: Different imaginings of the reading child and the construction and imagination of fear and safety shapes the Drag story hour debates. The controversies can be understood as a challenge to the previous hegemony regarding the direction and goals of Swedish cultural and library policy and the pluralistic democratic society these policies are meant to promote.

Originality/value: The paper offers new insights into the consequences of the revival of radical right politics, populism and societal polarization, and the different responses from public libraries.

Folkbiblioteken framträder i allt högre grad som en arena för politisk konflikt och turbulens. Denna utveckling ger i sin tur upphov till ett flertal dilemman. I detta kapitel vill biblioteks- och informationsvetarna Hanna Carlsson, Fredrik Hanell och Joacim Hansson i dialog med Maria Ehrenberg, som arbetat som regionbibliotekarie i Region Halland, diskutera de utmaningar och möjligheter som folkbiblioteksinstitutionens demokratibärande uppdrag står inför i samtidens politiska landskap.

Demands for an evidence-based healthcare increase and today all medical decisions are to be based on scientific results. The evidence-based healthcare means that hospital librarians have a stronger role as mediators of scientific information. The evidence-based movement implies a positivistic epistemological view that influences the information literacy practices. This study focuses how the information literacy practices of hospital librarians in Sweden are constructed and enacted in relation to different epistemological perspectives in healthcare. The analysis is structured around three identified practices of hospital librarians where information work is performed: the clinical practices, the information seeking practices and the health technology assessment (HTA)-practice. In these practices, different epistemological perspectives are present, which affects the information literacy practices of hospital librarians. There is a movement from the holistic knowledge connected to the clinical practices, via specialized knowledge and generic instructions in the information seeking practices, to the most specialized knowledge and positivistic perspective in the HTA-practice.

Purpose. The challenges to healthcare caused by the COVID-19 pandemic forced hospital librarians to develop their abilities to cope with change and crises, both on a social level and an organisational level. The aim of this study is to contribute to knowledge about how hospital librarians developed library services during the pandemic and how these changes contributed to building information resilience in the healthcare organisation. This paper also seeks to explore how resilience theory, and specifically the concept information resilience, can be used within library and information science (in LIS) to investigate resilience in the library sector.

Design/methodology/approach. Nine semi-structured interviews with librarians were conducted at four different hospital libraries in four different regions in Sweden between March and May 2022. The empirical material was analysed through an interaction between the tzheoretical perspective and the empirical material through a thematic analysis. In each theme, specific resilience resources are identified and analysed as components of the information resilience developed by hospital librarians.

Findings. The results show that hospital librarians contribute to several different information resilience resources, which support information resilience in the healthcare organisation. Three aspects characterize the qualities of resilience resources: access, flexibility, and collaboration. The findings suggest that the framework for analysing information resilience used in this study is well suited for studying the resilience of libraries from both organisational and informational aspects.

Originality/value. The analysis of information resilience on an organisational level presents a novel way to study resilience in the library sector.

Debatt: Äntligen kom den: regeringens lagrådsremiss som ska stärka elevers rätt till skolbibliotek. Vi som utbildar blivande bibliotekarier gläds över remissen som i linje med forskning visar skolbibliotekets och skolbibliotekariers betydelse för elevers lärande. Samtidigt konstaterar vi att en lagändring också måste följas av riktade satsningar på landets bibliotekarieutbildningar för att förverkligas, skriver 16 biblioteksforskare.

Recent use of public libraries as political symbols by the radical right in their challenge of the established consensus in Swedish cultural policy is part of an ongoing (re)politicization of the field of cultural policy. This paper frames this development as part of a post-political condition of Swedish cultural and library policy. Through an analysis of previous research, policy, and policy debates, a conceptual understanding of the post-political condition is offered. The paper also provides an analysis with empirical examples of how this condition unfolds in librarians’ accounts of everyday public library practices. This composite analysis furthers our understanding of the enactment of Swedish cultural and library policy and contributes to a broader discussion of the current challenges facing these policy fields following the rise of the radical right in several countries. The findings point to a need for more nuanced and ideological discussions concerning the relationship between politics and culture and where public libraries are situated between autonomy and democracy.