LAM-professionals’ roles and attitudes to user participation in Norway and Sweden

This article aims to contribute to our understanding of how library, archive and museum (LAM) professionals in Norway and Sweden view user participation. Findings are reported from a questionnaire that explored the professionals' perceptions of their own roles and their attitudes concerning user participation. This is followed by an analysis of the underlying relationships between the questionnaire respondents’ perceptions and attitudes. Three subject positions are identified with associated interpretative repertoires: power sharing, outsourcing and engaging experts. A four-quadrant model based on broad approaches to user participation and on areas of organizational activity is employed for gauging the various leanings in the LAM professionals’ views on user engagement. The most prominent mindset among the professionals is to conceive of participation in terms of power sharing but participation can also be framed as outsourcing of certain tasks to users and as engaging experts in collaboration with LAM professionals. The findings suggest that the surveyed LAM professionals view participation as low to moderate power sharing with users no matter how they perceive their own professional roles. However, when it comes to the view of participation as engaging users in carrying out tasks or activities that would normally be done by the professionals (outsourcing), it appears to be linked to relating LAM professions to professions whose roles are most associated with information provision, creation and exchange as well as digital services or activities. These findings align with the recent discourse emphasizing the importance of user- and community orientation as means to secure the legitimacy and relevance of the LAM institutions. Further research is needed on user's attitudes and perceptions of their own role and how they perceive their interactions with LAM professionals to understand how different forms of participation relate to professionals’ and users’ goals and expectations.