In an international perspective the Russian children s library is a unique institution, being solely committed to children up to 14 years of age. In Russia of today it is, however, being exposed to hard pressure as the economical and social conditions have changed dramatically since the collapse of the USSR. My interest lies in examining this change of living conditions for the children s libraries and how this in turn affect their work and role in the present state. In order to view this change in a longer perspective, I compare the situation for children s libraries during the time of communist regime with that of today using documents about and from children s libraries. I have studied its legal position and conditions, financial and political state, and how the modern society affects children and youth, especially their daily cultural life.

The purpose of this master´s thesis was to investigate the role and function of the annual reports of public libraries: for what purpose are they put together and how are they evaluated and utilised. The study presents different views on the structure and content of library annual reports. Focusing on a specific public library and its municipal administration, the authors identify and describe problems and possibilities regarding the library annual reports. The study also provides a general view of their occurrence, their addressees and the importance attached to them.In a review of current literature on accounting and activity reports the authors place the annual reports of public libraries in a wider context. The study also presents two current models of performance measurement - the Intangible Assets Monitor and the Balanced Scorecard - which were developed in the private sector, and the authors discuss their relevance when applied to public libraries.Data were collected both in interviews and by means of a questionnaire.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study the public library identity from a brand perspective, how the public library brand identitity is communicated through blogs and what is communicated in them.The authors analyse the public library identity through selected concepts and a model within Aaker´s and Kapferer´s branding theories. These theories have been applied on literature and blogs as a method. The authors have examined literature about the public library identity in different works within Library and Information Science and political documents that applied to public libraries. An empirical study has been carried out on blogs published by public libraries in Sweden.The result of this study has lead to the identification of different core and extended identities for the public library brand. The core identities have been identified as democracy, adult education (the swedish word ?folkbildning? has no correct translation in english, adult education is the recommended related term) and lifelong learning.

There are reasons to believe that recent changes in the Swedish academic library environment create new images of identity. New information technology, changed educational methods and increasing numbers of students in higher education heavily influence the professional basis for librarians. The purpose of this essay is to examine and describe how the images of identity are conceived and expressed by staff in two university colleges in Sweden, Malmö University and Södertörn University. We define identity as the images of what the library is, what it is aiming to be in the future, what it should do and how. In a qualitative study attitudes towards and opinions of the role of the library in the university environment are investigated.

In Swedish school library research, the role of the school library has seldom been studied in a subject-specific context. When it has been, the subject has usually been a theoretical subject such as Swedish or Social studies. The purpose of this master's thesis is to study what role or roles the school library can play in a different context, in the program-specific subjects at a trade oriented program in the Swedish upper secondary school, and to determine what factors affect the possibility for the school library to play a role in such a context. The Food Programme was selected as the specific program to be studied. In this program, the students learn a trade, in this case bakery, and the teaching in the program-specific subjects can be expected to be practical in nature.

Cataloguing electronic documents makes new demands on libraries. This thesis discusses the metadata formats Dublin Core and MARC which are, individually or in combination, commonly used for object description in the digital library.The formats are studied with particular emphasis on characteristics such as underlying reasoning (ambitions during the development of the formats), flexibility (possibilities of expansion and adaption to new demands) and interoperability (cooperation between different metadata formats). The formats are dealt with in their context, i.e. we discuss what types of documents the formats are meant to describe, what environment they were originally created for, what functions they are meant to fill (to find, identify, select and acquire/obtain entities), and also how these factors are related. The Swedish projects SAFARI (which uses Dublin Core) and NetSök (which uses MARC) are presented briefly.

This master's thesis is about alternative career opportunities for library and information science graduates. Ever since the beginning of our education we have been interested in working outside of the traditional libraries. Now that we are about to receive our degrees in library and information science we are doubtful if the competence we have obtained is enough to meet the demands of the labour market. The employment field we have been studying in this master's thesis is information management, since this is a field that we find comparable to library and information science. Our study involves a qualitative survey amongst recruiting companies to investigate how the recruiters value different educations, competences and personal skills when they employ staff within the field of information management.

The Internet provides the common user with a variety of both traditional and non-traditional news sources, and a vast range of possibilities to contribute to the flow of information. By their participation in the production of information ordinary citizens can sometimes function as non-traditional news sources them selves and reach a potentially unlimited audience. The interactive nature of the Internet blurs the line between producers and consumers, and challenges traditional definitions of what counts as "news" as well as who qualifies as a "journalist". The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the potential consequences of this decentralization regarding the information behaviour of newspaper journalists and their perception of their professional role. The study consists of qualitative interviews with six journalists, employed by four of the leading Swedish newspapers, and a review of earlier research in the field.

The information flow of today is endless and the advances in information technology astounding. In today's information society it is of utmost importance not only to be able to find the right information but also to evaluate the information. The expression ?information literacy? is not a new one but it has never been as pertinent and essential as today. Information literacy is however not something which is easily and swiftly achieved.Swedish youth education is based on problem based learning in which the students are expected to research for material, evaluate their finds and use their skills to produce a good written or oral presentation.

The use of Internet by children and teenagers has become a special field of interest. Certain risks are associated with young peoples use of this media and national and international measures have been taken to assess and counter these risks.Library and informationscience have approached the subject of risks by looking at different software´s, so called Internet filters, that is used to control and censor the access to Internet based resources. In the USA, where public services and institutions that provide Internet resources to children and youth have started to require censorship of the Internet, a debate has arisen concerning the use of so called Internet filters.The theoretical basis of this master´s thesis is related to the conception of risk, gender and childhood. The focus of the paper lies on young peoples use of information and communication technology (ICT) and how risks associated with young peoples use of the Internet is constructed by different parties involved in supplying Internet resources. By means of a case study at a primary school in Skåne and at the company Netscan in Malmö.

The aim of this master thesis is to study how the development of a public library by means of ideas and methods from the private sector can be related to traditional core values. We base our study on institutional theory, which focuses on norms and values in an organisation, and new institutional theory, which focuses on how organisations are influenced by changes in the environment. We also use New Public Management with a market focus to analyze the implications of a development towards a more market oriented view.The method used is that of a case study of a new library concept, Idea Stores in London. Idea Stores are a number of new public libraries in Tower Hamlets developed from the results of a major opinion survey about libraries. The Idea Stores combine traditional library services with elements of adult education and lifelong learning in a partnership with local learning centres.

Traditionally the content of fiction has not been described, analyzed, classified and/or indexed to the same extent as non-fiction. As a consequence, this lack of content analysis has resulted in unsatisfactory fiction retrieval in relation to users seeking and search behaviour. This fact is why this Master s thesis is written. The total of library users' seeking and search behaviour is investigated in order to suggest methods to improve user adapted fiction retrieval tools. Suggesting relevant fiction retrieval tools corresponding to users' seeking/search behaviour is another aim of the study.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to make suggestions as to how librarians can promote young reluctant readers to help them find the joy of reading. We want to show how the comprehension of these children and adolescents can be translated into action in the librarians work with reading promotion.Our main questions are:? What attitudes do the librarians find that children and adolescents, ages 9-15 with reluctance to read, have towards reading?? What do public- and school librarians do to stimulate children and adolescents, ages 9-15 that are reluctant to read, to feel the joy of reading?? What role or which roles can the public- and school librarians have in the work of reading promotion, targeting children and adolescents with a reluctance to read?We have used Beers's theories about reluctant readers and reading promotion, Chambers's model and theory ?Reading Circle? and his theories about conditions that promote a ?good reading environment?. We have also used Smidt's theories about the librarian's different roles in the work of supplying literature.The method we have used is qualitative and based on literature and interviews with 7 children- and school librarians that all of whom work or have worked with reading promotion for children and adolescents in the ages between 9-15, that are reluctant to read.Our results show that in order to gain understanding about the attitudes towards, and relationship to reading, our targeted group have, the librarian has to be aware of the inner conditions that these children and adolescents have. These inner conditions are going to affect the work and the result of the reading promotion activity.

The aim of this master´s thesis is to examine how librarian´s views of the users can vary for different types of materials in public libraries. We have seen that literature and reading are the central parts of the libraries in Sweden. All other types of media are traditionally seen as complements and in focus for the study is feature film as an example of these other medias. We examine policy documents to see the official view of the general target group of the libraries and compare it to the view of the users of feature films as expressed by the librarians. The study includes several different types of empirical materials such as interviews, observations and documents and the method used is case studies.

Institutional repositories are now being created to manage, preserve, and maintain the digital assets and intellectual output of a university. The incentives to change the process of scholarly communication have also begun serving as a strong motivator. There are problems to consider and questions to be solved when dealing with electronic publishing and the implementation of institutional repositories. At present time no summary exists regarding the activities of scholarly electronic publishing at Swedish universities and university colleges.This Master's thesis aims to describe the current situation regarding electronic publishing and the development of institutional repositories at Swedish universities and university colleges. To investigate the situation, a questionnaire was sent out to 38 academic libraries since they are normally responsible for the electronic publishing within institutions of higher education.