In 2010 there will be a political resolution to ensure that the Swedish society is accessible to all citizens including people with disabilities. For this purpose a national action plan for disability policy "From patient to citizen" (Govt. Bill 1999/2000:79) has been set out with the aim of ensuring that the disability perspective will permeate every sector of society and that the approach and response to people with disabilities will be improved. The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs is responsible for implementing the disability policy in the cultural sector.
Since public libraries in Sweden are a part of the public cultural sector, they will also be affected by the political resolution regarding accessibility. The concept underpinning library services for disabled people must be that of equality of access. The subject of this master?s thesis is therefore to examine how the public libraries apply the instructions for accessibility from the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs, in particular those instructions which affect the way the library staff approach people with disabilities.
Our aim is to investigate which resources and methods the public libraries utilize in order to train library staff to ensure consideration for people with disabilities. We also want to know how public libraries are affected by different key factors such as disability associations, the county library and cooperation with members of the municipality. We have a special interest in exploring the educational efforts and in finding out the knowledge and competence within the library organization.
To this end we have examined a number of written sources containing legal documents and public reports about the disability policy as well as studied theories concerning knowledge and implementation in organizations. Eight interviews have been carried out with librarians responsible for the libraries' individual action plans of accessibility. The results reveal that the libraries are quite familiar with the needs of disabled people but have a very pragmatic view about this user group. The libraries use different kinds of readiness in providing considerate treatment. Some libraries have organized staff training to improve awareness of people with disabilities. Others learn from being constantly involved with disabled people. We have found that it is very difficult for librarians to formulate the knowledge that is needed for improving...
