| Summary: | The focus of this two year master’s thesis in Library- and Information science is the study of two Swedish Public Library buildings with the examples Lomma and Halmstad. The main goal and purpose of the thesis is to try to uncover which views and values of the public library are expressed in the examined libraries; and to what extent these views manifests are shown in its architecture. The theoretical framework is based on Raymond Williams’s cultural concepts of effective, dominant culture and the two extremities of this culture, called residual and emergent cultures. A second aspect is Yi-Fu Tuans concepts of Space and Place. The study also uses a historical background of Swedish Public Library Buildings. By close reading and textual analyses, the empirical study focuses on the municipalities’ documents surrounding the building of the library buildings in Lomma and Halmstad. The architectural perspective is studied through the architects own documents and architectural journals discussing the built Library Buildings. Results show that the technological advances of the time these libraries were built has put them in a position of change, which also is visible in the architecture. The libraries in Lomma and Halmstad function as civic icons of the community and the architecture is very dependent of the places where they are situated. The expressions of the two libraries differ in details but the overall result show that the values exhibited behind the building of the examined libraries is a part of a historical residual culture, functioning as effective and dominant. The conclusion of the thesis is that the expression of the architecture is however a part of an emergent culture. The buildings aim to comprise the values and display the diverse causes in its architecture. The buildings seek to manifest the ideal activity and working of the modern Public Library.
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