The purpose of this essay is to study the coming into being of two newly built public libraries in Sweden, Malmö public library and Linköping public library. In both cases, the architect was appointed through a competition. We have examined the degree of importance that one has put on the buildings functionality and aesthetics, respectively. Furthermore we have studied how the cooperation between library staff and the architects has worked, and finally we have studied to which degree the parties involved think that the interests of the users has been taken into concern. The first main chapter of the report is an overview of the literature found on the subject where we present theories on library architecture used in Sweden as well as abroad.

This study is about Wikipedia which defines itself as a free online encyclopaedia. Our chief interest lies in the debate and the controversy which has arisen around Wikipedia. After reading critical articles concerning Wikipedia we found that the debate for most parts had one identifiable theme namely the question whether Wikipedia is an encyclo-paedia or not.Encyclopaedia as a term and a phenomenon has a long tradition. Wikipedia, despite calling itself an encyclopaedia, functions differently in comparison to more traditional encyclopaedias. These traditional views involve encyclopaedic structure, its organiza-tion and its functions.

<p>This explorative study examines approximately one hundred electronic library homepages. It focuses on four aspects: form, content, structure and user support. Form relates to the presentation of information and is concerned with the relationship between text and graphics. Content refers to the type of information and services that an electronic library offers. Structure is concerned with the guiding principles that have motivated the grouping of information and services on the homepages.

Close to the city center of Reykjavik lies the combined national- and university library of Iceland. Usually, these two types of institutions are separated. The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the library in fact selects the new digital material to offer the users in Iceland, and if the combined mission creates any problems or conflicts.The investigation examines the planning and the content of the digital library, what user groups are addressed and how the organisation is held together despite the different missions. If cultural context in Iceland makes a difference for what is selected and offered to the users is also discussed.Six informants in strategic library positions dealing with the digital national- or university library, were interviewed. The answers have been analysed in light of the library&information literature on building and maintaining digital library collections and organizational and marketing theory.The main result of the study is that the informants do not see a conflict between the missions of the organisation, although traces of a struggle were found in some areas.

The development of higher education in Sweden poses new demands on higher education libraries. One way of meeting these demands has been to develop Learning Resource Centres (LRC), a concept that is relatively new in Sweden.The aim of this Master's thesis is to identify how the LRC-concept has been designed and integrated in three Swedish higher education institutions: Stockholms universitet, Lärarhögskolan i Stockholm and Göteborgs universitet. The thesis also aims at investigating what the Learning Resource Centres mean to the seats of learning, and in turn, the views of concerned parties in relation to the integration.The method used for the study is qualitative and based on interviews conducted with Learning Resource Centre staff, academic staff and principles or deans. In addition to this, strategic documents from the examined seats of learning are studied.Even though most Swedish Learning Resource Centres have used British Sheffield Hallam University's Adsetts Centre as their model, our study shows that the Swedish Learning Resource Centres of today have developed in various ways, due to local conditions; therefore, there is no definitive model for Swedish LRCs.In our opinion, one of the most important characteristics of a LRC should be its integration in the academic life of its university. There does not seem to be a "recipe" of how to conduct this integration.

The theoretical focus in this master is information retrieval (IR), and especially the part of IR that includes interactivity. This research is by some researchers called IIR. Our principal aim was to examine if search engines on the WWW are taking advantage of research results from IIR research. A way to do this is to look at the application of special features, in this case query expansion (QE) and relevance feedback (RF). Both these methods aim for a better matching of documents and the searchers information need.

The aim of this thesis has been to achieve a deeper understanding of how librarians provide adult readers with individually adapted readers´ advisory in public libraries. The focus within this context, has been to find an answer to how the librarians understand what appeal factors the readers are attracted to and what kind of reading experience the readers are looking for to be able to match book and reader.To be able to find answers to our research question we conducted eight interviews with librarians working with readers´ advisory in eight different public libraries in Skåne. Our theoretical standing point for the thesis has been that of Marie L. Radford and Cathrine Sheldrick Ross. Sheldrick Ross provided theories concerning the appeal factors of books.

The main purpose of this study is to investigate in what ways librarians and schoolteachers can co-operate and combine their professional skills in order to help and motivate children with reading and writing disabilities, and how audio books can be useful in this work. The main source of information is interviews with teachers from ten schools in the province of Scania, southern Sweden. Those teachers, their schools and their local libraries all took part in a project spanning from 1993 to 1996, aiming at increasing the use of audio books in combination with the corresponding printed versions in work regarding the here addressed problem. This study was made with a qualitative empirical method supported by a normative theory belonging to the new institutional theory school. There are no statistical conclusions in the report.

The main purpose of this thesis has been to investigate librarians opinions about the need for and possibility to use non-roman script in library catalogues. We have also investigated the routines of handling materials in non-roman scripts in two Swedish libraries. The investigation was made in the light of the recent shift in character set in the Swedish National Library Catalogue Libris. This change will enable use of multiple writing systems in the future.Our findings are that a multicultural society requires special consideration to the needs of citizens who speak other languages than the majority of the population. This becomes difficult when the languages spoken have a different writing system than the one used by the majority.

Librarians like to think that libraries contribute substantially to the progress of research. However, libraries still seem to have serious problems getting integrated in their parent organization on equal terms with other parts of that organization. The degree of integration of the library is thus the main topic of this thesis and the purpose is to examine how the interaction between librarians and scientists is formed and can be developed. That issue leads to concrete questions concerning what part librarians play in the scientists work and which factors influence the cooperation or lack of cooperation. We have chosen, for reasons of comparison, to make two case studies; one is a branch of a university library and the other is a library in a large pharmaceutical company.

The main purpose of this Master´s thesis, is to describe and discuss what constitutes the library collaboration between The Swedish Royal Library and the National Library of Guatemala, but also to analyse which effects the support has for public library work in Guatemala. The data consists of interviews and direct-observations during 2 months of fieldwork in Guatemala, Central America. The analysis is based on literature studies combined with the answers from the respondents and other results from the field work. We have found above all three factors to be of importance in the constitution of the collaboration between the National Library in Guatemala and the Swedish Royal Library: the Swedish library discourse, the Swedish aid discourse and the relationship between the people involved with the project. The library discourse in Sweden and in Guatemala emphasizes different aspects of the work.

This essay is about reading among patients in hospital. The aim of the essay is to find out what part reading and the library play for patients in hospital. An additional aim is to find out in what ways the collaboration between hospital librarians and hospital staff could be developed. The starting-point of the problem is one main question: What part does reading play for the patient during the stay at the hospital? On the basis of the answers to this question I have also looked for possibilities of enhanced co-operation between hospital libraries and hospital staff.The method for the essay is qualitative and fifteen persons in three different wards at University Hospital in Malm have been interviewed.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att undersöka om, och i så fall hur, man på ett fruktbart sätt kan göra de kommunala arkiven (och ev. andra arkiv) användbara i ämnet samhällskunskap A på gymnasiet. Detta test sker utifrån ett pedagogiskt undervisningsmaterial, närmare bestämt en portfölj tillsammans med en undervisningsplanering i samhällskunskap på gymnasiet. För denna uppsats har en forskarpraktiserande metod använts. Den används för att kunna uppnå syftet med skapandet av ett pedagogiskt undervisningsmaterial (portföljen) för gymnasieungdomar i samhällskunskap A.

We were interested in catalogers as human beings and in their reaction to a changed working situation. In the light of the changes which have been made at the libraries during the nineties, we investigated why the very group catalogers reacted with an intense and engaged open debate at the same time as librarians with special competence didn t seem to react in this way. The open debate about the catalogers changed working conditions was held in Sweden, above all at BIBLIST, which is a forum for library-connected questions. This forum uses an email list made particularly for librarians. The situation of the librarians was, to a small extent, also discussed in publications made for the library line of business.

Dissatisfaction with the current market for scientific publishing, dominated by a few large publishers able to obtain high subscription fees, gave birth to the Open Access movement. One problem for the Open Access movement, which aims at making research results freely available, is that scientists are reluctant to publish in journals that are free on the Internet, so called Open Access journals. This master's thesis aims at showing how scientists reason about their own publishing in scientific journals. It is investigated which factors are important when scientist decide on which journals to send their articles. The aim is to increase the understanding of scientists' views on Open Access.Six interviews were conducted with scientists in Biomedicine at Lund University.