| Summary: | The purpose of this essay, is to examine how the staffs, from Uppsala university archive, and Uppsala university library’s special collections division, perceive how their workplaces make themselves accessible for teachers in Uppsala university who want to make use of them in their teaching. By using phenomenography, it provides this essay with a framework for both theory and methodology. Because of this choice this essay takes on a qualitative research approach and limits the study’s source material to the interviews of five staff members and their workplaces’ policy documents. The first result of this study show that the term “accessibility” is frequently used in archival studies, although it is not well researched or clearly defined. The analysis of the workplaces’ policy documents reveals that, even though the term “accessibility” is given a central role in the Special Collections Division, the term is sparsely used and not fully explained, while in the case of Uppsala University Archive, the term is completely absent. The analysis of the interviews produces three main results. The first result shows two things. Firstly, that both workplaces consider their work with making themselves accessible for the university teachers as involving many broad and distinct approaches. Secondly, it can be argued that many of the approaches used at Uppsala University Archive are not relevant to this study, while the majority of approaches used at Uppsala Library Special Collections Division can be perceived as being directed towards making the workplace more accessible to teachers at Uppsala University. The second result shows that despite the two workplaces different purposes and approaches, the interviewed staffs perceive the most important aspects and possibilities in nearly exactly the same way. The third result shows that the two workplaces share many problems related to communication and cooperation with the university teachers and the limited amount of time they can devote into making themselves accessible for teachers in Uppsala University. This is a two years’ master´s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.
|
|---|
