The aim of this master thesis is to obtain a greater understanding of childrens choice of favourite books, insight in their reading experiences and their thoughts about the reading of these books. We also want to investigate if, and if so, how childrens librarians obtain knowledge of the childrens reading preferences and reading experiences and how they use this knowledge in their work to stimulate childrens reading. To reach our aim we have been carrying out quantitative interviews with six children aged nine to ten years and three childrens librarians working in public libraries. As a theoretical starting point we use the reader-oriented theory and Chambers Reading circle, which states that support from adults is the most important factor in the childs reading process. The empirical results are linked to theories and earlier research and are analysed under four different themes.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine if academic libraries market e-journals, and if so how this work is carried out. The ambition is to study what channels and methods the Libraries use, to inform their users that they have access to e-journals. The aim is also to survey if the libraries evaluate the use of the e-journals, and if so how. The objectives of the work are reached by using two main methods, document analysis and qualitative interviews. The study has been performed on three university libraries.

The aim of this thesis is to describe the subject indexing of images performed at the provincial museum of Jämtland and to evaluate the inter-indexer consistency at the museum. The main questions are: How are photographs indexed in the database SOFIE foto regarding Outline-codes, subject headings and natural language keywords? How does these procedures compare to research and indexing projects? How consistent are the indexers at the museum when choosing Outline-codes, subject headings and natural language keywords? Answers are sought by reading articles about classification, image indexing, indexing language, indexing consistency and by looking at a number of projects attempting to standardise image indexing practice in Sweden. The indexing practice at the museum is also described. In addition a minor inter-indexing consistency study, based on the subject indexing of ten photographs made by five indexers at the museum, is performed.

This thesis analyses how the European Unions institutions deal with the issue of illegal and harmful content on the Internet in key documents presented during the period 19961999. Particular attention is attached to content where the legal status is determined in relation to the user and to content that is legal, but characterized as harmful and entailing a need for special protective measures. The theoretical and methodological approach draws on discourse theory as formulated by Laclau and Mouffe. The thesis studies how the problem is represented in key documents from the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, with particular regard to the discourse on harmfulness, the child and Europe. The findings are that the overall discourse has shifted focus over time, from an emphasis on the protection of minors toward a more market-oriented discourse stressing the importance of protecting the competitiveness of the European economy.

The purpose of this MSc thesis is to examine the retrieval effectiveness of two Web search engines with queries from the academic discipline of Classical Studies. The two search engines are chosen to represent two different types Google as a broad general search engine and Argos as a specialised search engine for the subject of Classical Studies. The search engines are compared for precision among the first twenty results returned for thirty queries. In order to avoid bias in the study, the queries are based on real users' information needs. Due to the subjective character of the concept of relevance, the study is performed with five different experiments with five different definitions of relevance.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine librarians opinions about media. Four questions are asked: What kind of different attitudes to new media has librarians had? How is new media discussed in relationship to each other in the debate? What mechanisms and underlying causes control the discourse for new media in public libraries? Does the discourse change over time, in that case, how? The theoretical background is theory about moral- and media panic and popular adult education. The media panic theory includes the idea that the same reaction occurs every time a new media is introduced. The theory about popular adult education is that the public need to be cultivated.

The information market is constantly changing. With new and improved information technology more people get access to more information faster. However, the number of people educated to handle information also increases. Business intelligence has for a long time been a well-known tool for companies to be competitive. Because of the increased access to information the competition between companies has intensified and more people have become aware of the advantages of business intelligence and how it can help them compete.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how childrens librarians at public libraries motivate their selection and their purchases of fiction for children and youth. The aim is also to find out what is felt like a problem at the selection process and what is not. Six childrens librarians have been interviewed in this qualitative study. On a basis of a theory of literature pedagogic perspectives the librarians were asked how they look upon purchase of fairy-tales, classics, pulpliterature and literature that contributes to the debate about man and society. They were also asked about their opinions of Bibliotekstjänst, of criticism of childrens books and how they reason about their purchases in general.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to contribute to the understanding of high school teachers information seeking behaviour in the transition from university studies to occupational practice. The theoretical framework encompasses theories of professional socialization, the sociology of knowledge, of professions, and of library and information science. The empirical material has been collected through interviews with six recently qualified high school teachers in different subjects. The interviews have been analysed on two different levels; first on a descriptive level and then on a theoretical level. The major findings are that the academic context limited the student teachers information seeking and they did not have the opportunity to choose cognitive authorities on their own initiative.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine which factors influence librarians selection of electronic information sources, and to investigate whether librarians use of search strategies and search tactics changes depending on which information source they use. The electronic information sources are: online databases, Online Public Access Catalogues OPAC, World Wide Web, and CD-ROM databases. The theoretical framework is based on step 3 Select a source and step 4 Formulate a Query in Marchioninis information seeking model. The search strategies are divided into two categories: analytical and browsing strategies. In order to supplement the theoretical framework with empirical facts, 8 librarians were interviewed.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine ideas used to legitimate Swedish digital libraries, with a focus on the cultural heritage, their relation to cultural policy and an eventual crisis within the latter. Which ideas are linked to digitalisation? How do the arguments for creating digital libraries differ between central actors? How do the digital libraries relate to cultural policy and an eventual legitimacy crisis? These are the questions this thesis seeks to answer. The theoretical starting-point consists of a legitimacy discussion and its connection to Swedish cultural policy. The method used is idea analysis.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the view of market-led culture, focusing on literature, within Swedish governmental cultural policy. The main issue is to discover changes in attitude towards cooperation between culture and business by comparing the attitudes and ideas expressed in the governmental policy documents from the 1970s with the governmental policy documents from the 1990s. To illuminate, and with an effort to explain, these attitudes and ideas expressed in the documents their political and social context has been studied as well. The theoretical starting point is two political ideologies, and Danish cultural policy researcher Dorte Skot-Hansens theories of cultural policy in the Nordic countries. The methodological starting point is two variants of analyses that are textual ones.

The aim of this master ´s thesis is to understand why there are difficulties in finding joint methods and standards in the field of image indexing. The main focus for interpreting these issues is on Sara Shatford ´s article Analyzing the Subject of a Picture: A Theoretical Approach. In the article Shatford discusses a theoretical basis for identifying and classifying the subject in a picture. In doing so she uses concepts taken from The Philosophy of Art, Meaning in Language and Visual Perception. With the aid of S.R.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine literature on current media events. We see a close relationship between this literature and the media society where we relate Manuel Castells theory of the network society. In this thesis we have chosen books which give different views on three major media events in Sweden: 1 the assassination of Anna Lindh, the former Swedish Minister for foreign Affairs; 2 the Knutby murder and; 3 the Tsunami disaster in Southeast Asia. These books combine fact and fiction in their writing which in media science is called faction. This form of writing has similarities to genres like new journalism and documentarism and can be problematic for the reader in terms of genre expectations because of the mix of fact and fiction.

BarnOPAC is a Swedish library interface for children. It was launched in public libraries in Sweden in 2001 and has now become a part of library software equipment in several public libraries. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the interface BarnOPAC on the basis of the childrens perspective. The questions raised consider: how children experience and handle this interface, how library staff experience it and what viewpoints librarians have on childrens use of it. For this purpose we implemented a user study including eight children using the interface in a school library.