The purpose of this thesis is to examine how Swedish highereducation librarians mediate discovery tools to its users. Thisstudy aims to investigate higher education librarians? generalattitudes towards discovery tools, their perception ofstudents? discovery tool usage, and how they mediatediscovery tools to students through reference interviews anduser training. The empirical ground of this study is a semistructuredsurvey that was answered by 115 instructinglibrarians. The study concludes that although librariansgenerally have a critical attitude towards discovery tools theyalso think that the discovery tools serve a useful purpose,especially as a starting point in the information searchprocess.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the importance of public libraries for individuals in their everyday life and to study the differences in views between the individuals. Questions posed in this study are: What do public libraries mean to individuals? Which differences between individuals views of the public library are to be found? What is the reason for differences to occur? The analysis is based upon qualitative interviews with six persons, four women and two men between 31 and 55 years of age. The theoretical starting points are Anderson and Skot-Hansens theory of four different roles of public libraries and Bourdieus theory of lifestyle. The study acts on a hermeneutic attitude.

With this master thesis we wanted to find out in which way the concept of public service is connected to different perspectives, ideals, visions of the future and forms of organizations. The purpose with our thesis was to do an analysis of different concepts regarding to public service. To the analysis of concepts we used Swedish newspapers and analysed the issue of public service that had been discussed in articles written during the last five years. From this material and other papers about public service we developed a model of public service ideals. We wanted to find out what the different perspectives thought about the Swedish television and their commission.

Denna uppsats handlar om skolbibliotekariens roll i skolans verksamhet och deras samarbete med lärarkåren. Syftet med studien var dels att ta reda på vilka kompetenser skolbibliotekarierna anser är centrala för arbetet och dels hur de såg på sitt eventuella samarbete med lärarna på skolan. Arbetet har avgränsats till bibliotekariernas perspektiv på rollen och relationen. Dessa frågor besvarades med hjälp av semistrukturerade, kvalitativa intervjuer med respondenter från tre gymnasieskolbibliotek. För att skapa en teoretisk grund gås också kompetensbegreppet som sådant igenom samt tidigare studier rörande samarbetet mellan de två yrkesgrupperna.

The purpose with this thesis is to examine how four novels with a trait of confession written between 1996 and 2001 have been received in the Swedish daily press. This is done from a feministic perspective. The study is based on 36 reviews and the method which is used consists of a close-reading of the reviews, where the following questions are asked to the texts: Are there examples of reception in sexual analogies?; Are the novels ascribed a status of universality or are they considered to be something private?; How does the reviewers comment the exposure of the authors themselves and persons close to them?; What does the positive versus negative criticism concentrate on?; How does the reviewers comment the sexual element in the novels? The theoretical framework focuses on how womens literature has been treated in literary criticism and the treatment of the confession novels in the 1970s. The analysis of the reviews has, among many other things, showed that the novels mostly are regarded as something private; that the reviewers for different reasons question the publishing of the novels and that there are things concerning women and sexuality that is not accepted to write about.

The principal aim of this thesis is to test if extracts, produced by the automatic summarizer "Copernic Summarizer", are possible to use as abstracts. The aim is also to give a picture of what automatic summarization is and why it is motivated. Three questions are asked: What is automatic summarization and what can it be used for? Is it possible to replace the author-written abstracts with extracts from "Copernic Summarizer"? Is automatic summarization motivated for the different areas of use that are identified in the first question? An automatic summarizer is a program that is intended to summarize text automatically and it can be used for different purposes, for example for summarizing WebPages or scientific articles. To answer the second question an experiment is carried out.

The aim of this study has been to investigate the views concerning the sharing of music files over the Internet as expressed by some of the parties engaged in the current debate in Sweden concerning these issues. The purpose of this study has also been to scrutinize the views about music filesharing as expressed by the parties in question, as well as the conclusions possible to extrapolate from these opinions. The method used to gather information from the parties subjected to this study has been by conducting and recording interviews with representatives from the organizations and companies entities in question. Those entities are: the Record Company Sony/BMG, The Swedish branch of the organization IFPI International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the Swedish organization the Pirate Bureau. The method used to analyze the empirically gathered material has been inspired by a method common in the discipline of philosophy of education known as Phenomenography.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how semantic relations in a document collection can be visualized with a Kohonen self-organizing map. It can be seen as a map of the information space which can be used to support information retrieval. The study makes a comparison of the possible differences between a map that is based on morphologically unprocessed text and a map where the text has been lemmatized. The text that is being processed is the definitions of all the existing instances in WordNet of a random selection of indexing terms from the Times-collection. The purpose is to see if morphological processing somehow can show different semantic connections between term instances based on their definitions.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to examine the fanzine, a form of amateur publication, in Sweden, both in the traditional paper form and the more recent electronic form. It deals with what is distinctive about the fanzine as a publication and also as a social and cultural product. It also looks upon how the fanzine uses the Internet and the new possibilities it brings. The people behind 18 fanzines, 10 electronic and 8 in paper, have answered a questionnaire about how they produce, publish, distribute and promote their fanzines, what they think about the fanzine as a mode of expression, and how they use the Internet. The masters thesis uses theories within cultural studies as a theoretical approach to the fanzine.

The aim of this study is to examine reading on the MobileReadforums. The term ?to read? is extended to also cover bookcollection and usage of new technology such as mobile readerunits.A catalyst for reading on mobile reader units seem to be the needto always have access to the personal e-book collection. Apartfrom being a source for reading the collection of e-books alsoserves the purpose of extending the members self-esteem.A large portion of the activities on the MobileRead forum isaimed at making new technology comprehensible with the help ofprotocols to determine the usage of that technology. The processof making protocols also seem to be another way for the membersto extend their self-esteem.Traditional libraries are mainly seen as one of many sources for ebooks.Librarians are mostly perceived as being service mindedbut lacking in e-book knowledge.There is also a risk for miscommunication as the library hasdeveloped other protocols that defines an e-book and how itshould be used.This study is a qualitative analysis based on forum posts collectedfrom the MobileRead forum..

The aim of this masters thesis is to learn how an organization has solved its information management via intranet and document management. The purpose is to identify what different types of information are made available via an intranet, how this information is structured and what functions the intranet includes. Conventions, directions and advice about intranets and document management were studied, with the purpose to compare whether the systems of the company correlate with these. Other issues considered in the thesis, are how the employees of the organization use the intranet and how the document management is organized. To get an understanding of these questions the structure and functions of the intranet were studied empirically and a questionnaire on what the employees need and use, concerning the intranet, was sent out to 130 employees.

This thesis examines the subject of reference interviews and the ways librarians form an opinion of users information needs. Using literature and interviews with three librarians I look at the questions below: - Why and when are reference interviews needed? - What significance do they have? - What ideas exist about the performance of reference interviews? - Are there any differences in librarians views of the questions above compared to views in the literature? Results from literature studies and interviews show that reference interviews can be important when librarians try to find out more about users information needs. However its neither necessary nor possible to analyse all reference questions. Librarians therefore need to determine if a reference interview is needed or not.

The study set out to find how artists organize and use their personal collections from a Personal Information Management (PIM) perspective, and how that use affects their practice and their art production. A secondary object of the study was to articulate the ways that personal collections are utilized as tools by creative users.  The empirical data consisted of five qualitative, semi-structured interviews with Swedish and Norwegian sound artists. The constant comparative method was used for analysis, and Activity Theory was used as a theore- tical framework for the study. The study concluded that artists? personal collections, while diverse in content and structure, serve the same functions as tools in creative processes, and that attention to the uses of personal collections highlight needs that could be better met by integrated PIM-functionality.

Jeanine Basingers bok The World War II Combat Film presenterar en annars väldigt oupmärksammad genre, den amerikanska Andra Världskrigs-stridsfilmen. Utifrån den mall som Basinger beskriver i boken har jag här diskuterat och analyserat hur Saving Private Ryan håller sig till mallen som skapats av tidigare stridsfilmer. Mallen består i korthet av en mängd element som används genomgående i genren; såsom gruppen, hjälten, målet och fienden. Dessa element förekommer från den första andra världskrigs-stridsfilmen Bataan från 1943 och har konsoliderats och utvecklats sedan dess. Slutsatsen blir att även om SPR blivit känd som en nydanande och orginell film så är håller den sig nästan slaviskt till mallen, det enda som möjligt kan skilja den lite från andra filmer i genren är det ursprungliga målet, det är inte vanligt att ha ett såpass politiskt inkorrekt mål som att rädda en enda man..

During the late 1990s a movement with the intention of forming independent libraries emerged on Cuba. They were seen as an alternative to the public libraries which were supposed to be suffering from censorship by the Cuban government. The purpose of this thesis is to compile and bring structure in a debate regarding public libraries on Cuba and what have become known as independent libraries. In this thesis a textual analysis has been approached for examining articles, websites and reports concerning what attitudes and position the library support organizations Friends of Cuban Libraries FCL, Cuban Libraries Solidarity Group CLSG and IFLA/FAIFE have regarding the two different library types. These positions is throughout the survey connected with the concept of intellectual freedom.