In 2003 the libraries of ten municipalities in the northern part of Sweden were each given 10 000 (SEK) by the BIN-project to purchase books on demand instead of making inter-library loans. This attempt was called Köpa på efterfrågan (Purchasing on demand). The purpose of this master thesis is to evalutate Köpa på efterfrågan. The results of the evaluation show that the books purchased on demand were quite popular. Almost all the purchased books were non-fictional with most books being bought within the field of medicin.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine gender division in public libraries by reviewing literature and interviewing eight public librarians and two chief librarians. The reason why we decided to investigate this topic is the lack of research concerning sex-segregation in library and information science. By choosing this subject we intend to deepen the understanding of the significance of gender both within the public library and of the occupation in general. Some researchers claim that the low status of librarianship is a result of the large proportion of women in the profession. We want to find out how our informants view the relation between professional status and female domination.

For young people today the ability to read and interpret text seems to be of decreasing standard. This bachelor thesis is trying to find patterns among five different library patrons, all adults and most of them readers for life. The specific aims are, through their individual stories, to find out what made and helped them become readers of literature for enjoyment and pleasure. How do they look upon themselves as readers, how do they find their reading and finally which role does it play in their everyday lives. Five semi-structured interviews have been conducted in a qualitative way and been put through a thematic-narrative analysis.The avid readers of this study all read throughout their lives and almost right from the beginning read a lot.

This Masters thesis aims at presenting a picture of, and critically examining, the Swedish debate concerning the public library and the future by way of 21 articles in three library periodicals. The questions examined are: -What are the views concerning the future public library in Swedish library press? -What characterizes the debate and why? Theories on political institutions and information society are used and the method is hermeneutic, a type of idea-analysis. The first step in the analysis consists of a categorized presentation of the material. The themes concern the form and content of the library as well as competence and hopes/fears.

The primary aim of this thesis is to examine female lawyers' relationships to information from different angles. The starting-point is that the legal information, retrieved from through different information sources, is not free from values and subjectivity. The commonly presumed objectivity of legal information is questioned, based on the fact that this kind of information has developed and changed historically in the context of, and in relation to, society. Another aim is to find out how the female lawyers experience their situation in a traditionally masculine working environment. Qualitative interviews have been carried out with seven female lawyers involving questions about their daily work about the sources that they are using.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate and describe the literary life of Madame de Staël, during the period of the French Revolution and the time shortly after. My intention is to do research on her impact and influence. I also want to examine her effect on Swedish literary society, with special references to Swedish authors. The method used is a qualitative one, where I have studied nonfiction and fiction connected with the field, for example Mme de Staëls own writings, which I make use of to illustrate the phenomena. During this period the society was dominated by patriarchical values and patterns of life.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine the supply of magazines and periodicals for young people at the library. We also examine young peoples reading of magazines and periodicals and compare the librarys selection with what young people read. The main questions of this thesis are: What do young people do at the library on their spare time? What weekly magazines and periodicals do young people read? What range of magazines and periodicals do the city- and the school library have? Where is the department located and how is it designed? What kind of relationship is there between young peoples reading and the selection? To answer these questions we have done an interview with a librarian and a questionnaire among 13-16 year old children. We found that it is not often that young people read their magazines and periodicals at the library.

When producing an interview report the researcher is put to the test of describing the qualitative interview method in terms of assumed orderly steps and procedures taken during the interview process, while at the same time account for a very social dynamic process. In practice, even the most carefully prepared scenario for a qualitative interview study probably does not correspond to the expectations made. What happens between the plans and the actual interview itself? This issue is investigated by contrasting the actual engagement of the participants in an interview project to how these relationships are accounted for in Master thesis from the Swedish School of Library- and Information Science in Borås. Theory and methodology from Actor Network Theory (ANT) have been applied into the area of qualitative interviews.

We have carried out a study of a classification system for the Swedish collection at The Royal Library in Stockholm from 1887. It was printed in 50 copies. The constructor, Bernhard Lundstedt, and his colleagues used it as guidance in lack of a catalogue. We regard it a local classification system. Little research has been done on old classification systems, but Francis Miksa points out the importance of examining them.

The aim of this thesis is to examine collaborative tagging as a potential asset to libraries by a review of 10 social bookmarking sites and their features, and a discussion of these features? possible use when the environment changes from the web to a library. Previous research on collaborative tagging is presented, as well as overviews of social bookmarking, folksonomies and the concept of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0. The study itself is presented as a walkthrough of common features and how they work, followed by a schematic overview of which sites have which features. Finally each site is presented in a more detailed manner.

The aim of this paper is to study if implementation of a school library management system called FreeLib has created favourable conditions for the school librarians to cooperate with other professions and become a more forward working place. I have studied relevant literature about school libraries, organisation, digital libraries and documents that regulate school and library activities today as well in the past. In order to fulfil my purpose I have done a qualitative survey with six school librarians from Swedish primary schools with pupils at the age of 6 -16 years old. To identify strengths, weaknesses, threats and opportunities I found in the material I used a method called SWOT analysis. According to this study the use of the digital FreeLib system has developed a better teamwork between school librarians at different schools.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to examine how children describe their experiences of their own reading, with focus on different aspects of reading: Choice of reading, reading environment, response to reading and book talk. Our aim is also to examine which approaches to reading their stories illustrate. The research is founded on semi-structured interviews with six children aged 10, in connection with book talks. For analysis we used Åse Hedemark?s study Barn berättar : En studie av 10-årningars syn på läsning och bibliotek as well as Aidan Chambers? theories concerning reading and reading environment.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to make an outline of different methods and theories within the field of bibliometrics and critically review their strengths and weaknesses. The author studied literature that discussed bibliometric methods and theories. The number of empirical studies that are based on bibliometric methods and theories are numerous and where principally excluded, but some empirical studies were included as part of the argumentation for and against different methods and theories. The author first gives an outline of which methods and theories there are and describes their different strengths and weaknesses. Citation analysis has many different fields of application such as information retrieval, mapping science, evaluative studies and monitoring literature.

The aim of this master thesis is to study electronic publishing, and our main purpose is to examine different strategies of publishing such as: markup languages and page description formats. We examine in what context these strategies are used for publishing, when it comes to scholarly documents produced by Swedish universities and university colleges during the spring of 2002. We apply a sociological perspective as the theoretical framework for to identify the main purposes for scientists to publish their work. We also discuss properties belonging to the different formats: XML, HTML, PDF and PostScript. By doing a content based survey of the websites at Borås University College and at Gothenburg University, we have found that the most common form of electronic publishing, regarding scholarly documents, are lists with bibliographical information on publications and presentations of current research.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the librarians? perception of the users of children?s and young people?s literature. Questions posed in this study are: How are the librarians described according to appearance, personality and interaction with the users? How are the librarians described compared to former studies on the subject? Which perception can be seen, based on Douglas Rabers?s theory which describes the role the public libraries can take in the society? The study is based on content analysis. We have examined 15 descriptions of librarians in both picture books and literature for young adults, published between 1985 and 2006.