Doctoral dissertation on the ideology behind the public libraries: From customer to thinking citizens automatically by Bosse Jonsson, historian of ideas and librarian.
The author has interviewed library directors and politicians responsible for libraries in nine municipalities in Sweden in order to examine how those responsible for the public libraries solve their tasks and how they view the public library function in modern society.

New library and culture centre
New start for culture in Haninge. In one of Stockholm’s suburban municipalities, the culture centre is placed in a very central position and houses the municipality’s main library as well as art and theatre.

Norway

The library as branded goods
“Everbody” talks about it and “everybody” is doing it.
The Royal School of Library and Information Science in Copenhagen recently arranged a seminar on branding of libraries. The background could perhaps be summed up in the rather wellknown refrain: That the library as institution, place, service and cultural and political issue is becoming invisible in the Information Society.We, that is to say, the users and the politicians, take the library for granted.

Denmark

New sorting facility inaugurated in Århus
Under considerable media attention the main library in Århus on 1. April introduced its new system for self-service returns. The very advanced system is the hitherto largest sorting system for library materials and is developed by the Århus firm Crisplant. The system consists of four automatic return machines and an ‘intelligent’ sorting conveyor belt on two levels.

Business Information Service
The libraries in Lund, Malmø, Elsinore and Copenhagen will through the Danish-Swedish EU-project – Info Business Øresund – strengthen the libraries’ service to businesses and entrepreneurs in the region. Courses in searching business information and new networks for libraries on both sides of the Sound will eventually provide the business community with very useful knowledge.

Translated by Vibeke Cranfield