”Biblio är gratis. Storytel är det inte. Men Storytel är mycket, mycket bättre.” : En användarcentrerad enkätstudie om de svenska folkbibliotekens och kommersiella aktörers e- och ljudbokstjänster

Sammanfattning

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the use of Swedish public libraries’ and commercial actors’ e- and audiobook services, thereby identifying potential areas of development in the services provided by the public libraries. More specifically, the users’ characteristics, experiences, needs and motives for using these services are examined. This study fills a knowledge gap, since there is a lack of research on user perspectives on Swedish public libraries’ e- and audiobook services. Applying a semi-structured survey method, quantitative and qualitative data is collected from 702 e- and audiobook readers. This data is ana-lysed using a combination of univariate, bivariate, and thematic analysis methods. A new theoretical mod-el, based on T.D. Wilson’s model of information behaviour and the digital library evaluation model Inter-action Triptych Framework, is constructed and used to interpret the data. The findings indicate that alt-hough there are demographic similarities between users of services provided by public libraries and com-mercial actors respectively, the user groups differ in terms of needs, experiences and motives for using their service(s) of choice. Most noteworthy is the finding that the public libraries’ services are perceived as inferior to the commercial equivalents, both in terms of system usability and content usefulness. The use of the public libraries’ services is mainly motivated by the fact that they are free of charge, while users choose the commercial services because they are attracted by their collections and their lack of reading and listening limitations. Considering this, we argue that the public libraries’ services must be improved regarding system usability and content usefulness and access. However, these issues are closely intercon-nected and therefore require a unified approach across the library sector that addresses the user needs identified in this study. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.