A need for more knowledge has been identified regarding the outreach services of Swedish public libraries directed at elderly people who live in retirement homes. Therefore the aim of this Bachelor’s thesis is to investigate the role as a mediator of literature in retirement homes from the public library staff’s point of view. To reach the aim the following three questions were answered: What is characteristic of mediation of literature directed at retirement homes? What knowledge is needed to be able to conduct mediation of literature in retirement homes? How is mediation of literature carried out in retirement homes? The method used to collect the empirical material was qualitative semi-structured interviews. Four staff members were interviewed, each staff member representing one public library. Jofrid Karner Smidt’s five mediation roles (1994) were used as a theory and a tool to analyse the empirical material. The results of the analysis showed that there are four roles of mediation that are most common in retirement homes. Those roles are: the role as an educator, the role as a social anthropologist, the role as a critic and a literary expert and the role as an ordinary person. None of the four staff members took the role as a marketer. It is suggested that one reason for that could be that ideas associated with new public management (NPM) did not have an impact on the public library staff’s mediation of literature in retirement homes.