The aim of this study is to examine the discourses that occur about the role of the public library in four journals. Two from the daily newspapers and two from trade magazines during the period between 2007 and 2022. By identifying the discourses that try to define the role of the public library over the past 15 years, we aim to get a clearer picture of the similarities and differences that exist between the expectations of the public library, and how this affects its legitimacy. 

We have identified four discourses that in different ways try to define what role the public library should have in society. It is the book discourse, the meeting place discourse, the silence discourse, and the information-mediating discourse. During the period we studied, these are struggling to achieve hegemony and they are all more or less prominent in the debates that appear in the daily newspapers and in the magazines. The most prominent discourses in the daily newspapers are the meeting place discourse and the silence discourse. In the magazines, it is the meeting place discourse and the information-mediating discourse that are the most prominent. The discourses are struggling to define the role of the library and what kind of users the library should direct its activities to. The fact that the meeting place discourse is prominent in both daily newspapers and in magazines indicates that libraries have an important role as a social meeting place.