The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine what part and importance electronic games play in the life of girls, how the girls use electronic games and what the girls think and say about their use of electronic games. We also intend to examine what girls have to say about electronic games at the public library. Our attempt is to illuminate and bring knowledge to those who work within the library with the selection, purchase and conveyance of electronic games. Method used in the survey is focusgroup-interviews with girls in the age between 12-14 years in three different schools. The findings are related to four different perspectives, theory of child development, from a gender perspective, theories of understanding how young people use computer games and theories to understand the purpose of public libraries.

Children of today are surrounded by many different kinds of media. Books have to compete with new media like computers, video games, many TV-channels etc. The aim of this study has been to investigate the reading habits of 9-12-year old boys in their spare time, and their reasons for reading related to their use of other media. Our interest has been to shed light on the boys reading habits, their preferences and motives for reading and their reading functions. Even though our focus has been on their reading, we also have examined their use of other media and the function of this use.

This thesis is structured as a combined empirical and literary study. The aim is to investigate how children at the age of 11-12 years reflect on their readings of fiction and how these reflections relate to the librarians' perspective of a child's reading ability and reading development. Qualitative interviews with children and librarians constitute the empirical part. Research and theories are compared to the empirical part then placed into a more extensive context. How do children at the age of 11-12 years old reflect upon their reading of fiction and how do librarians relate themselves to this age? An analysis using interviews, research and theories is used to answer these questions.

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 this masters thesis is to examine the picture book canonization process in pre-schools. To succeed in this I have examined what pre-school staff believe to be the criteria of a good picture book. Together with an observation of the pre-schools current collection, other factors which can influence the collection of the picture book are included. This constitutes the foundation for a description of the pre-school picture book canon. To pursue this goal, I have used the methodology of focus group interviews with staff from two pre-schools in a middle-sized town.

This Master Thesis aims to study and discuss the occurence of three concepts in some influential cultural policy documents which includes the UNESCO public library manifesto, the Swedish libraries act, the Swedish cultural policy objectives, and a study from the mid nineties which deals with the cultural policy. The questions asked are: -Do the documents mention democracy? In what way? -Do the documents mention the public sphere? In what way? -Do the documents mention information? In what way? -How can we understand the content of the documents through relevant theories about democracy, the public sphere and information? Theories about the information society are used, as well as theories from Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Schiller and Robert Dahl. The way of method is document studies and abduktion, with influences from hermeneutic theory. The analysis deals with the documents through these concepts: democracy, the public sphere and information and puts forward the content, or lack of content, about democracy in the analysed material.

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.

The purpose of this study was to investigate young teenagers 13-16 reading habits and attitudes concerning todays modern teenage literature especially written for the young teenagers. The study also includes the readers apprehension of the literature and how the target group is reached. The study is based on results from questionnaires, interviews and by compiling summaries of literature relevant to this study. Earlier research has been compared with results from this study. Reflections made by teachers and librarians concerning the youths reading habits are an integral part of the study.

In the year 2003 the Swedish ministry of Justice drew up a communication about the incorporation of the European Unions directive about harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the Information Society, 2001/29/EG. The communications name is Ds 2003:35. This study examines the arguments in the communications from some of the copyright organisations in Sweden. For this study we have used five referral statements from organisations who represents different types of originators. We have studied their arguments and how well they argue for their theses.

This is a qualitative study with a reflexive approach. The aim of this masters thesis is to describe how the internal information is managed in Borås Theatre and Borås Public Library related to the internal flow of information within the organisations according to descriptions of different units, staff and work tasks. Ten qualitative semi-structured interviews with employees at the Theatre and the Library have been conducted. The organisations have been studied separately. The interviews are presented according to six categories presented in the theory chapter as a result of the study.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to identify discourses within the school library field and to analyse which professional identities the discourses result in for school librarians. The empirical data consist of 71 articles from Swedish journals concerning school libraries and school librarians, between the years 2000-2003. The theory and method used is a discourse analysis which is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. This form of discourse analysis was chosen since it was useful when identity was the focus of study. The analysis is accomplished in three steps.

The web has made an incredible amount of unorganized information available to anyone. There are search engines that help us structuring the information, but it is still difficult to find what you search for on the web. The purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate whether the already existing techniques for automatic indexing are suited for the new information retrieval context on the web and how the choice to support these techniques, or not, affects the search results. This is examined through a literature study on automatic indexing and other related concepts, such as information retrieval and information searching on the web in order to get a theoretical frame to the work and by an observation of the search engine HotBot to approach the purpose of the thesis. The observation is carried out by searching HotBot's database and investigating the search results in order to try to identify patterns that can reveal something about how HotBot's automatic indexing is done.

This masters thesis investigates how the Swedish county libraries relate to equality between men and women. The thesis treats the county library both as a place of work and as a part of the national library network. One of the reasons why this study focuses on county libraries is because of their special position in the Swedish library organisation as a link between the national policy and the public libraries. The analysis in the study is based on theories that argue masculinity and femininity as social constructions, and therefore can be affected by a different type of conduct. Data was gathered using qualitative questionnaires combined with some quantitative elements that were used to gain fundamental facts regarding the distribution of employees between the sexes and the existence of equality policies.

This Masters thesis aims to examine how Swedish public libraries deal with the new challenge of evaluating web resources. In order to study this we have asked staff involved in gathering links for the libraries web sites to participate in a survey concerning how they go about choosing links. Apart from trying to capture this procedure it has been our purpose to establish whether the libraries feel they should provide their patrons with evaluated links at all and in what way they are influenced by other libraries or other main figures involved when choosing a link. We were also interested in the differences between libraries with large and small link collections. When defining evaluation, we have only focused on content.

This paper conducts a qualitative examination based on interviews with six childrens librarians. The purpose is to put a perspective on the librarians competence and focal knowledge within the area of reading promotion and reading stimulation aimed for children, and also to examine how this competence and knowledge is constructed. The work is based on the following questions: How do childrens librarians experience reading promotion and reading stimulation within their profession? Which competence and what knowledge do childrens librarians experience as most important in order to make their work with reading promotion and reading stimulation function? What can be concluded regarding the construction of their competence and knowledge? The analysis is carried out from theories about competence, tacit knowledge and reading promotion. Following primary conclusions are drawn from the study: The professional role is mainly experienced as promoting reading as pleasure, but also as an important factor for childrens language development.