erspective [80][upps-01.gif] This is a thesis on the Swedish Public Lending Right PLR, from a historical perspective. Some of the questions which are investigated in this thesis are: why did the State decide to introduce a PLR and why did it take about 20 years to make the decision? The question why the PLR was not introduced on a copyright basis is also discussed. The focus of this study is during the period of 1934-1956 and it is a literature-study. Mainly there are four reports made by different committees that have been examined. The answer to why it took about 20 years was that the question of a PLR was complicated since it involved two different political areas: the cultural and the legal. The explanation to why a PLR was introduced was because the State could afford it. It was also introduced because the arguments proclaimed by the Swedish Author Association, {Sveriges Författareförening, of how the libraries had a damaging effect of the authors finances, also became the opinion of the State. The Swedish government never took the alternative, to let the borrowers pay for the PLR, into consideration. No legal adjustment in the copyright law took place though. That was probably because it would lead to difficulties, since the government wanted to make a difference between which author that should receive a PLR or not. Chiefly the State wanted to support Swedish authors who wrote fiction.