The aim of this study was to examine how children in ages 3 to 4 use the public library with the research questions: What does children?s, in ages between 3 and 4, information behavior look like when they visit a public library in leisure time with a parent? What is the nature of interaction between child and parent, child and the staff of the library, and between child and other visitors? What is the function of the cultural tools in relation to the children?s information behavior? The theoretical frame of reference consisted of Lev Vygotsky?s ?the zone of proximal development? and Roger Säljö?s theory about using cultural tools. To answer the questions I have observed 4 children together with their mothers and siblings at a public library. From the result of the observations I found that every child had their own information behavior. Two of the children only used one kind of cultural tool ? books.

The aim of this thesis was to examine how role players experiences libraries and if the libraries are or can be an arena for activities that involves role play. A public library exists for everyone, but could nevertheless be viewed as a female sphere where women both borrow more books and visit the libraries program activities to a larger extent, compared to men. I asked the question whether men?s reason for choosing a different venue for information and culture was related to the libraries not being able to satisfy their needs. The theory of the thesis was Dorte Skot-Hansen, Casper Rasmussen Hvenegaard and Henrik Jochumsens model that states that the libraries can have four different functions and act as a venue for meetings, knowledge, inspiration and experiences.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the function of public libraries on the social web, focusing on reading promotion and reading stimulation. For an understanding of the larger context regarding public libraries on the social web, we conducted online interviews via email with people in the Swedish library profession, together with a content analysis of various texts on the subject found in library journals and on the Internet. Furthermore to identify the public library's practice on reading promotion and reading stimulation on the social web, we did interviews with librarians at a public library on their use of a blog for this purpose, together with a questionnaire handed out to the library's users on their use and conceptions of the blog.The conceptual framework of this study consists of four key aspects in the theoretical and empirical definition of Library 2.0 presented by Holmberg, Huvila and Widén-Wulff. The results showed that the public library can create a substantial value through its use of the social web, but it?s necessary to have a clear vision of the desired outcome.

National libraries hold large, valuable repositories of often unique materials. How can we ensure that the knowledge is accessible without endangering the materials that hold the knowledge? Digital preservation is meant to solve this problem. With more and more material being accessible digitally, users are expected to do more and more of the finding on their own, instead of being guided by librarians. What kind of knowledge do the librarians have, that cannot be mediated through a system? How is the knowledge of experienced librarians passed on to new librarians? What is the difference between physical and digital materials? I have interviewed senior and junior librarians of Det Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen, Nasjonalbiblioteket in Oslo, the National Library in Helsinki, and Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm to learn about their journey to knowledge of their collections.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the information need of the incubators that comes from Chalmers University of Technology and are situated at Chalmers Innovation. It is also of interest to investigate how Chalmers University Library covers this information need. The investigation was carried out using qualitative interviews with representatives of the incubators. They were asked questions about the perceived need of information and which type of contacts they had with the library. The result is that the incubators feel that there is a great need for business information that is hard to find.

The subject of this bachelor thesis is the debate regarding privatization of public libraries. The purpose is to investigate howprivatization is portrayed in different articles and by different participants. The articles used are from two of Sweden?s largest national daily papers: Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet and two of Sweden?s largest library magazines: Biblioteksbladet and Tidskriften BiS: Bibliotek i Samhälle. The questions asked are: how is privatization portrayed? Whatdiscourses can be traced in the texts? And: can one foresee a future aiming towards privatization? In order to answer these questions Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis was used as atheoretical and methodological viewpoint.The discourses found were named: The value ground discourse, the market liberal discourse and the pragmatic discourse.

The aim of this issue is to study how Swedish public libraries deal with the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of information in connection with public use of the Internet. The authors intention has been to find out whether the public use of the Internet has caused ethical problems for library workers and how the libraries solve situations when they consider their principles violated by library users. The authors study the debate on the issue in a couple of Swedish library magazines published during the late 1990s and they also give a few examples from the USA during the same period. They study the ethical principles and directives for schools published by the Swedish Board of Education as they claim that many of the public library users are students who bring along their ethical conceptions and thereby affect the ethical climate of the libraries. In their study the authors refer to ethical rules given to librarians by their trade union DIK and to the conclusions drawn from the hearing Good Ethics on the Net held by the Swedish IT Commission in 1998.

Detta arbete undersöker hur den så kallade minoritetsreformen, som kom 2010, har påverkat arbetet med material på samiska på Umeå stadsbibliotek. För att ta reda på detta har vi använt oss av kvalitativa intervjuer med bibliotekarier på stadsbiblioteket och Samernas bibliotek samt en representant för Umeå kultur. Intervjuerna visade på ett antal utmaningar och svårigheter i detta arbete, framförallt knutet till beståndsutveckling och förvärv samt synliggörandet av den samiska litteraturen. Analysen förhåller sig till och bygger vidare på tidigare studier som berör de svenska bibliotekens arbete med de nationella minoriteterna och minoritetsspråken. Det som framförallt framgår i såväl intervjuerna som källmaterialet är ett tydligt behov av utrymme och resurser för arbetet samt material som tilltalar de tänkta användarna.

In this master thesis, I investigate four Public Librarys´ program activities. The purpose is to explore what the library program activities contribute to as a part of a well functioning democracy. The theoretical points, I have brought from political science. I assume three different ideals of democracy; electoral democracy, participation democracy and deliberative democracy. All have different views on what can be characterized by a well-functioning democracy.My empirical material consists of library program guides, the libraries´ target documents and interviews with staff at the libraries who work with or have overall responsibility for program activities in their respective libraries.

This thesis addresses the library environment and how it affects the accessibility for the library users. A study is made of the public library in Eslöv. We wanted to find out how the library staff, the senior librarian and the architect discuss the library environment, considering:? The accessibility for the library users.? The possibility for the users to orientate themselves in the library.We also wanted to see how we as users experience the library environment and compare these experiences with the results from the interviews. The material used consists of qualitative interviews, observations of users and our own experience studies.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to describe and analyse the origin and development of the libraries in the town of Värnamo, between the years 1908 and 1960, when a new modern public library was inaugurated. The method I have used is, to a great extent, examining and analysing source material from the archive of the municipality in Värnamo and the popular movement in Jönköping. As a background to my study I describe the development of the Swedish society, from the end of the nineteenth-, until the middle of the twentieth century. I also describe the local development of Värnamo, during the same period. Furthermore I also give a general description of the progress of the libraries in Sweden during the same time.

The aim of our study is to gain understanding of how parentsperceive their own, the preschool's, and the library's efforts to stimulate preschoolers' enjoyment and yearning to read, as well as what types of collaborative efforts the parents seek.The study is based upon qualitative interviews with parents, both mothers and fathers, to preschool children (aged 1.5 to 6 years old). The analysis does not offer any generalizations. We have chosen to use a sociocultural perspective as the theoretical starting-point of our study, our thoughts being that we learn together with and by the help of others. We consider this perspective to be closely related to Aidan Chambers's "The Reading Circle", which we have chosen to use as our tool of analysis.It turned out that the parents perceived their own reading stimulating role as crucial, even if they did not consider all they did as reading stimulative. Some things, such as discussing the book while reading, occurred naturally but is also an important part to stimulate reading.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how the images of librarians are conceived and held by the public. It has often been claimed that librarians are subject to widely spread negative stereotyping. My purpose is to study the nature and origin of these stereotypes. Since popular media is one source of these stereotypes and images I have chosen to look into how librarians are characterized in 20 Swedish novels written between 1982-2002. The questions this thesis aims to answer are: What images of librarians occur in the novels? How are the tasks of the librarians respectively described in the novels? How are female and male librarians respectively described? The analysis of the novels is then compared with interviews with three professional librarians about their view of their professional role and their perceptions of its status and image.

Vi riktar detta arbete till människor som i sin profession kommer i kontakt med individer som har neuropsykiatriskt funktionshinder. De som företrädesvis har hjälp av rapporten är de som jobbar inom områden som berör samtal och vägledning. Vi har intervjuat sju personer som har neuropsykiatriska diagnoser och två personer som jobbar professionellt med samtal och vägledning av neuropsykiatriskt funktionshindrade. Vi har även använt egen relevant litteratur, obligatorisk kurslitteratur, manuell sökning av lämplig litteratur på bibliotek i Vetlanda, Tranås och Ydre samt sökt lämpligt materiel via Internet, vi har även talat med personer som är berörda av vårt ämne. I vårt resultat kom vi fram till att personer med neuropsykiatriska funktionshinder behöver bestämda ramar, konkreta och tydliga mål som är nåbara, samt relevant information som är förklarande i sitt sammanhang.

This master thesis is about access to literature translated into Swedish sign language for deaf at the public libraries. It is by now a well-known fact that there is produced very little literature in sign language for deaf. This is so even though the policies for the library nationally and internationally, and the public law for libraries in Sweden says there should be literature available for all groups of disadvantaged people. People who have problem reading ordinary ink books have the right to get the book adapted into a medium accessible for them. The goal of the Swedish law for disadvantaged says that in 2010 Sweden should be accessible for all irrespective of weather you are deaf or not.