Today, public libraries in several countries have introduced staff-less opening hours. The term “staff-less library” refers to a public library that during some of the opening hours are without library staff available to the users, but the library is open for users to enter and use its services. In staff-less libraries, users need to manage the library on their own. In this paper the following question is explored; how is increased self-management related to users self-governing and to users being governed in the library. In addition, methodological issues
and the utilization of interviews and observations in relation to the library as place are investigated. The governing of users, or governmentality, is situated at the physical library and the library as place is vital to the research. One early finding discussed in this paper is the notion of the library as meeting place and how users actually are making use of staff-less libraries. Libraries are administered in order to facilitate certain meetings and aggravate others,
although users also conduct themselves in alternative ways in relation to the existing order. This two-sided process is analyzed. At this early stage in research, the combination of methods used seems to be fruitful to explore users’ self-managing of staff-less libraries.