This thesis explores how public art is received by the general public in Borås, Sweden. As a point of departure it was assumed that a study of the local papers would offer an accurate insight in to the debate of public art. Hence, press clippings were chosen as primary source material together with the works of art. The questions addressed in the study are: what is written in the local daily press about public art? Who writes in or makes statements to the local dailies about public art? Textual analysis is the predominant method employed while hermeneutics is the underlying theory.

The aim of this study is to examine the interaction between a group of multilingual, twelve-year-old children, and three libraries. The children live in a suburb of a larger city. The three libraries are their school-library, the library in their suburb and the main library in the city. We have examined if and how the children use the libraries, what the libraries mean to them in their daily life and what their possibilities are when it comes to participate in and influence activities and collections at the libraries. We have pursued qualitative interviews with sixteen children in grade six and three librarians, working with multilingual children at the three libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness on the European Unions official website EUROPA, depending on which language is used to formulate the search question. Our main concern were if you get access to the same information depending on which language is used to search information The European Union has so far eleven official languages, and with the forthcoming expansion with negotiations with thirteen new countries to affiliate to the union by May 1:st 2004, the official languages will be even more. We have made a comparison between Swedish and English, using 29 different topics from which we formulated 2x29 queries. The topics used were found at the Swedish Governments FAQ about the European Union, EUsvar. We wanted the topics to be as authentic as possible to avoid bias.

The aim of this thesis is to mediate to the reader an image of Chinese classification systems and in what way the methods of classification have progressed during time. The tradition of classification in China is very old and dates back more than two thousand years, but it wasnt until the downfall of the dynastic era in the beginning of the 20th century, that Chinese libraries and methods of classification were modernized. This thesis also identifies the development of Chinese librarianship which is of old age since Chinese literature stretches three thousand years back. The main question is in what way the values of three different philosophies are reflected in five classification systems compiled between 1953-1975. The three philosophies are Daoism, Confucianism and Maoism/Mao Zedong Thought.

The thesis of this Masterpaper has been to analyse what tendencies there might be to distinguish structural alterations in the publishing business today and how they can be understood analytically. The following questions have helped form the principal opinions found in this essay: - What tendencies according to the alterations in publishing business is Piratförlaget representing? -What tendencies according to the alterations in publishing are the literary agents representing? What tendencies regarding the alterations in publishing are the electronic publishing and other techniques related to the publishing business representing? Participants, familiar with the publishing industry in various ways, have been interviewed. The main theory is based on facts from sociology of literature, although Faheys and Randalls Key Scenario, with its driving forces, also provided a great deal of help. In addition, to structure the dynamical publishing business, Peter Senges The Systems Iceberg Model was useful.

The aim of this study was to examine if an organisation that strives for democracy and participation, also possess an open information culture. This study deals with the information culture in a social movement organisation, Attac Gothenburg. To achieve the aim, following questions were asked: What is the organisation culture like, is it open or closed? What is the information culture like, is it open or closed? What is the information culture like, in relation to the identity of the organisation? The focus has been put on earlier research in social movements, organisation and information culture. In this qualitative study I have collected material mainly from interviews.

This Masters thesis concerns feature film services in Swedish public libraries. We have investigated the opinion of eight librarians concerning values and criteria for selection as regards film. The theory chosen comes from varied disciplines, for example sociology, adapted to our subject. The most important theories are Antonio Gramscis idea of hegemony, Herbert J. Gans concept of taste cultures and Carl Gustav Johannsens discussion about quality.

This Masters thesis investigates user education at academic libraries. The increased demand on students to keep themselves updated in the information society of today urges libraries to develop their user education, concerning both content and teaching strategies. The aim of this study is to examine user education at academic libraries, and the approach of librarians in their teaching. The research questions address how librarians implement the user education and what they focus on. We also want to explore what differences and similarities there are between the user educations, and if anything could be further developed within them.

The aim of this master's thesis is to investigate how adults and especially children's librarians and intermediate level teachers experience children's literature. The aim is also to examine how children at the age of nine to twelve experience the literature that is written for them, according to a few master's theses written at Bibliotekshögskolan in Boras. Which criteria in children's books do the different groups consider as the most important, that the children can learn something when reading or is it the experience of the literature itself that is the most important? To fulfil the aim of this master's thesis I have interviewed three intermediate level teachers and three children's librarians and the result has been analysed using a model created by Maria Nikolajeva that shows four ways to get close to children's literature. My study is too small to be counted as a general result but it shows that both the children's librarians and the intermediate level teachers mainly ends up in the field that concerns the reading experience one can have when reading fiction.

Our purpose is to analyse three different epistemological discourses that exist in the social practice, Library and Information Science LIS, using the strategy for interpretation from the mimesis model by Paul Ricoeur and the terms from the critical discourse analysis by Norman Fairclough. The aim is also to explore there different views of knowledge organisation. We review previous research involving epistemology, knowledge organisation and discourse analysis in LIS. These show that there are many different epistemological standpoints and that later research has shown a more critical and sceptical state of knowledge organisation than earlier traditional positivist ideals. Discourse analysis is described as an important theory and method in LIS.

The aim of this thesis is to describe how to work with the development of language by reading aloud. I have chosen to look at the reading aloud project "Boksnurran" Book Wheel to see if it has influenced the daily work with reading in preschool. My questions are: How do they work with reading in preschool? Is the reading environment suitable? How do the staff describe their booktalks? What problems do they encounter? What can be improved? The thesis is based on qualitative interviews. Those interviewed have participated in "Book Wheel".

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate what the users/visitors do at the Filipstads Bergslags Library when they are there. The questions we asked were "What do the visitors do when they are at the library?" and "How do the visitors give priority to the librarys services?" From these two questions we asked a third "How do the visitors view the library and its functions and what function do they see as the most important to them?" The method we used was a user study and we did this at the request of the management at the library. A questionnaire was constructed and handed out in a pilot study. We made some changes in the questionnaire before we started to hand it out at the library.

Adolescence is a turbulent time in life and gives rise to new information needs for young people. Information needs related to school subjects have been relatively well researched but few studies have focused on information needs and use related to life concerns. The purpose of this Master's thesis is to examine the information needs of a number of teenage girls in relation to their life concerns and how they meet these needs. The sample consists of twenty-one girls aged thirteen and fourteen. The research is based on literature studies and qualitative interviews combined with a questionnaire.

The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to gain deeper knowledge about how librarians in public libraries in Sweden view theirprofessional role with regard to the last decades of change in the library field. Especially concerning the technical evolution and towards a higher user orientation and market mindset, and in which ways this has influenced the librarians everyday working tasks. A particular focus has been placed towards the reference transaction, the use of computers and e-media, and the stock development. We believe that there currently is a changeover, from the libraries traditional line of function, towards them as more of service institutions.The method used in this study for answering the research questions and to gather empirical information is semi-structuredinterviews.

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.