This bachelor thesis examines the library as a public sphere in the notion of Jürgen Habermas? theory from 1962. The questions asked concerns how the public sphere is discussed in relation to Swedish public libraries today in our late modern society. The analyzed material consists of the Swedish Cultural Bill of 2009 and five qualitative interviews with librarians. The material is analyzed with two of the four social actions presented by the sociologist Maw Weber: value-rational and instrumental.

This thesis aims to analyse ontology, primarily as the word is used in the context of the Semantic Web. One of the main questions is how ontologies relate to classification and thesauri, two concepts well known within Library and Information Science. The vision of the Semantic Web, a more intelligent addition to the current World Wide Web, has raised the question of how to deal with information scattered over a multitude of locations, stored in different formats, written in different languages et cetera. This issue is in many ways similar to the classical problems encountered in library science: how to classify and categorise large amounts of information. The use of ontologies is one of the main steps leading to the Semantic Web, as well as a tool which can be used in other areas of information organisation and management.

The aim with this masters thesis is to investigate how gender is presented in Swedish picture books, in order to give librarians and other actors in the field knowledge about what kind of books they supply impressionable children with. I investigate if and how the changes concerning gender-equality in the Swedish society during the last 25 years are reflected in childrens literature, and compare how men and women are portrayed in four books from the early 1980s with four books from the 2000s. My study is delimited to three aspects of character formation, introduced by Maria Nikolajeva: description of psychology, actions and relations to other characters. It is carried through by consultation of Yvonne Hirdmans theory of how men and women are held apart and that the man in this relation constitutes the norm as well as Nikolajevas list of typical male and female characteristics. By reading and interpreting the chosen books, I analyse both text and pictures.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the road towards a modern library in the southern archipelago of Gothenburg between the years 1943 and 1976. The archipelago consists of about thirty smaller and larger islands, of which seven are inhabited throughout the year. Styrsö and the surrounding islands composed a municipality of their own until 1973. In January 1974 it became a part of the municipality of Gothenburg, this is also the year when the only bridge in the archipelago was ready to be taken into use, between Donsö and Styrsö. There is no bridge between the mainland and the islands.

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.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to describe the information behaviour of six adults with dyslexia with focus on how they handle information problems. The data consists of literature and interviews with six persons with dyslexia. The theoretical framework used in this study is Anders Hektors theory about human information behaviour as well as concepts and theories from the library and information science field. Ten information activities are used to describe the informants information behaviour. Answers are sought to the following questions: · How do the informants describe their backgrounds and their reading- and writing disabilities? · What problems do the informants meet in the context of information in their everyday lives with reference to ten particular information activities? · How do the informants solve these problems? The study showed that the main problems for the informants appeared to be difficulties with reading and spelling, problems with the appearance of the information, lack of time and stress while reading and writing as well as problems with lack of awareness about dyslexia.

The purpose of this thesis is to draw a picture of pedagogical work at the senior level with a critical perspective of information and media. As a method for gathering material for the analysis, a case study was made with qualitative interviews together with documents that describe the case. Relevant literature for the subject has been used as an introduction and as a theoretical basis. The literature concerns subjects such as a childrens relation to media, the schools intructions, the role of the school library and some theories regarding learning. The conclusion is that the respondents focus on conversations and reflection regarding the sources of information and its use, and that the childrens adaption of the material is an important factor in teaching.

The purpose of this study was to examine if there are gender differences in computer use among the young. Our aim was to find out in what respects boys and girls differ, if at all. The main method of investigation is a literature review. We have also made a complementary empirical study in a public library. The literature studied principally covers computer use at home and in school.

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 master's thesis is to describe the management of free Internet resources in three Swedish research libraries. With the starting point in the increased quantity and importance of these resources, together with reflections on the change of the concept of collection, the thesis shows how and to what extent these freely accessible Internet resources are being integrated in the day-to-day work with collection development. It also elucidates the problems with the free Internet resources from the research libraries points of view. The study is based upon analyses of collection management literature and qualitative interviews with librarians at the chosen libraries. The thesis shows that the research libraries still have not come very far in their work of integrating the free Internet resources in their collections.

In Sweden most public libraries give users access to databases. These databases are sometimes possible to reach outside the library by internet at any time and this provides a change for the library and the society. Librarians function as change agents when they give access to databases and when databases are introduced to users. However, reports show that the use of databases, especially those in English, is not high in reference work. This study aims at analysing attitudes of librarians to access and use of databases on and by public libraries.

The aim of this masters thesis is to investigate how childrens librarians deal with gender issues in their work when acquiring and mediating books to children, and how reviews in Bibliotekstjänsts Sambindning can be of help in this aspect. The thesis focuses on children between 6 and 12 years of age and their reading of fiction. Four interviews with childrens librarians and an examination of reviews in Sambindningen have been carried out. The reviews were examined both by finding out with what frequency gender issues are dealt with and by studying 20 childrens books from a gender perspective, comparing my judgement with the one they got in the reviews. The examination of Sambindningen showed that the reviews therein only sporadically bring up gender issues.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to illustrate the public librarian. People in general, including library users and leading personalities in the field of culture in the communities do not know the tasks of the public librarian. We presume that the vague picture of duties of the public librarian might cause problems. In this dissertation we mean to examine only public librarians, hereby we exclude for example, university- and company librarians. The sentences of this thesis are: How are the public librarians viewed, in meaning of, tasks, role/-s, comptetence/-s, status and image? And can we call it a "profession" in the classical sense? We answer these questions by using relevant literature, interviews and conference paper.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate the reasons for public libraries to have story-time today and also the reasons for story-time at the public library historically in Sweden. Why is the phenomenon of story-time still existing at public libraries today? The study is based on a questionnaire that was sent to childrens librarians in the Västra Götaland region. The material collected in this questionnaire was put together and resulted in six different categories showing the libraries purposes and thoughts of their story-time activities. The categories were: cultural heritage/tradition, joy of reading, language and imagination, library visits, storytelling and mutual experience.

Classification systems express an idea of the world as it was when the systems was made. If the classification system is not revised there is a possibility that the system will become antique and hard to apply to different subjects. The purpose of this study is to see if the SAB-system is a classification system which shows a reflection of the subject Religion that is equivalent with that of Swedish universities. The ideas which are behind the classification of the subject religion in the SAB-system have been analysed, as well as the structuring of the scientific discipline Religion at the universities. The result will show if the SAB-system can classify the subject religion in a satisfying way at university libraries.