| Summary: | The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine and compare the process of starting a school library at schools which haven't had a school library before, and to examine and compare the experience of this process according to the principals and the persons responsible for the school library. I have examined two Swedish independent primary schools (age 6-15 years). I have made qualitative interviews with the principals and the persons responsible for the new school library. In all, I have made seven interviews. As requested by the new Swedish Educational Act, both schools had recently started creating school libraries. One of the schools had recruited a half-time teacher-librarian and the other had no staffing at all. In the interviews, I have examined the attitudes of the informants towards school libraries, if this attitude has changed during the process of starting the school library, the informants' experiences during this process and the informants' views on the school library as an agent for student achievement. I have used David V. Loertscher's taxonomies for the principal, the school librarian and the student, to analyze the statements of the informants. The result of the study shows that at the school without library staff, the person responsible for the library had a hard time starting it as there were no time allocated. The work was easier and quicker done at the school with the part-time teacher-librarian. The views of the school library and of its possibilities for student achievement, that the informants expressed, were positive at the school with the staffed library,as well as their experiences. At the other school, the attitudes and experiences were more negative. The conclusion of the study is that staffing is an important factor for a successful school library, and that starting a school library requires a great amount of planning, knowledge, time and resources. This is a two years master's thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.
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