Mats Dolatkhah
Doctoral student, Swedish School of Library and Information Science
University College of Borås
Homepage last updated: 2009-02-04
Thesis project: Public libraries and reading children: Children's reading and library use in early 20th-century Sweden.
The thesis aims to explore the relations between public libraries and reading children in early 20th-century Sweden. The early 20th-century was a period of great social and political change, that also witnessed the first important steps in the development of the modern Swedish Public Library-system.
As empirical sources, I am using a collection of oral-history interviews collected by students of SSLIS during the 70's and 80's. The interviews were conducted as part of their library education, in the classes led by lecturer and library historian Åke Åberg (1916-2004). During 2006, the larger part of the collection was digitialized by the Library of the University College of Borås, and is available to the public as Biblioteksminnen (Library Memories). In making sense of reading as a social practice, I find cultural historian Roger Chartier's synthesis of bibliographical, hermeneutical and sociological perspectives especially helpful.
A scholarship from Stockholms Arbetareinstitutsförening (The Association of the Stockholm Workers' Institute) has been granted to the project.
Keywords: Reading, Popular Education (Folkbildning), Public libraries, Children, Library history, Book history, Oral history
Link to a paper reporting some preliminary results in the journal Library History (PDF).
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