This Master's thesis discusses the freedom of speech, the right to freedom of opinion and expression, freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas in the context of public libraries in Sweden. The scope of this thesis is to examine the acquisition and maintenance of the literature about the killing of Sweden's Prime Minister Olof Palme 1986. This literature will serve as an instrument to measure the extent to which Swedish public libraries adhere to the rules set by the Swedish parliament, United Nations' universal declaration of human rights article 19, UNESCO's public library manifesto and the principles of the Federation of Library Associations and Institutions..

The aim of this master thesis is to examine how leadership in public libraries is constructed discursively in the Swedish library field of today. The empirical material reviewed is job postings and articles from three library related journals.The thesis seeks to identify what different leadership discourses can be found by looking at definitions, forms of address, present actors and themes emerging. It also aims to examine the contingent presence of late modern leadership theories in the order of discourse. The leadership theories primarily investigated are New Public Management (NPM) and value-based leadership.The theoretical starting point of the thesis is discourse theory, developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. In the analysis a model of four phases is used; in which central concepts of discourse theory help identify the discourses.

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 main purpose of this thesis has been to investigate librarians opinions about the need for and possibility to use non-roman script in library catalogues. We have also investigated the routines of handling materials in non-roman scripts in two Swedish libraries. The investigation was made in the light of the recent shift in character set in the Swedish National Library Catalogue Libris. This change will enable use of multiple writing systems in the future.Our findings are that a multicultural society requires special consideration to the needs of citizens who speak other languages than the majority of the population. This becomes difficult when the languages spoken have a different writing system than the one used by the majority.

The aim of the study is to examine ideas surrounding copyright law and related rights appearing in the referral statements that the participants of the library sphere gave to the department writ Ds 2003:35. These ideas reflect the positions the library sphere take regarding issues surrounding the copyright law and related rights. The department writ was preceded by a directive from the European Union; Directive 2001/29/EC of the European parliament and of the council of 22 may 2001 on the harmonization of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the information society. The writ Ds 2003:35 was later followed by a proposition from the government which was co-herent with the preceding writ. The empirical material has been analyzed with a starting point in the polarizations, artist/audience, private/public and original/copy, presented in PhD Martin Fredriksson?s book Skapandets rätt.

In the paper we bring up and analyse the attitudes librarianshave towards youth and youth programs in the public library.The purpose is to raise awareness among librarians and tomake the process of change and development. We have usedsemi structured interviews in order to answer our researchquestions and conducted the interviews with five librarians incharge of the youth programs in different public libraries. Inthese interviews we asked about their views on youth as auser group, youth programs and how this affects theiropinions on the roles of the public library. We have also triedto see how the librarian?s opinions differ from how thelibrary runs their youth programs today.We have used two different models as theoretic framework.One of them has defined three different roles of the publiclibrarian and is constructed by Maj Klasson and the other is adeveloped version of Andersson & Skot-Hansen?s classicmodel of the roles of the public library made by Jochumsen,Rasmussen & Skot-Hansen.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to identify and describe thedifferent roles that are expressed in a public library by researchingthem in the four policy documents concerning Västerås public libraryin 2010 and by interviews with three specially chosen key persons.Further studied are the discourses that can be perceived in thematerial and whether or not the roles could come in conflict witheach other. Laclau and Mouffes discursive theory constitutes themethodical frame for this thesis and by using terms from discursivetheory the analysis was made in four steps.Seven roles were identified from the policy documents concerningVästerås public library and the interviews with the key persons. Thefirst role of the public library was the intermediary of knowledge andinformation, the second was viewed as a democratic role, the third asa marketing role, the fourth as a role that handled the collaboration,the fifth role was to improve literacy, and the sixth and seventh roleswere as a culture centre and a meeting place. With the help fromkeywords five major discourses were found within the material.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to discuss marketing as it applies to some school libraries. Today?s marketing is about relations. It involves the establishment, maintenance and development of relations with users, non-users and other library related relationships.

Balagan! - for 9-12 year old on the City library of Malmö?Balagan! A place far away, filled with magical things. Here, a group of scientistsleft their research labs behind, in a seemingly endless story exploratorium.Now, a group of kids discover the place, trough a doorway found insidethe City Library of Malmo... They named the place Balagan. Together, theystart to create a world of stories...?We, me and Sara Stiber have made a project in cooperation with the City Libraryof Malmö, where we have been developing a concept for a soon-to-belibrary department for 9-12 year old.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to study various views of sponsorship in relation to public libraries as found within three cultural policy documents. The main objective is to discover which ideas are considered relevant in the partnership between the Swedish retail chain, Åhléns, and the children?s public library, ?Room for Children? (Rum för Barn). In 2005, Åhléns provided SEK3.14 million in sponsorship to ?Room for Children? at Kulturhuset in Stockholm.

The aim of this master´s thesis is to examine how librarian´s views of the users can vary for different types of materials in public libraries. We have seen that literature and reading are the central parts of the libraries in Sweden. All other types of media are traditionally seen as complements and in focus for the study is feature film as an example of these other medias. We examine policy documents to see the official view of the general target group of the libraries and compare it to the view of the users of feature films as expressed by the librarians. The study includes several different types of empirical materials such as interviews, observations and documents and the method used is case studies.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the criticisms of the Swedish library education 1990-2005. By studying four different magazines, we tried to find the various opinions. The years investigated are 1990 to 2005. We have studied articulated opinions, not all opinions, in four library journals.

Librarians like to think that libraries contribute substantially to the progress of research. However, libraries still seem to have serious problems getting integrated in their parent organization on equal terms with other parts of that organization. The degree of integration of the library is thus the main topic of this thesis and the purpose is to examine how the interaction between librarians and scientists is formed and can be developed. That issue leads to concrete questions concerning what part librarians play in the scientists work and which factors influence the cooperation or lack of cooperation. We have chosen, for reasons of comparison, to make two case studies; one is a branch of a university library and the other is a library in a large pharmaceutical company.

The purpose of the essay has been to examine representations of immigrants in contemporary library and information science research in a Scandinavian context. By analyzing nine articles from the past decade we examine the perceptions that exist in the concepts of multiculturalism, culture, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and whiteness and what role and importance the library as a place is assigned in relation to immigrants as a user group. Our study consists of a qualitative text analysis, a critical oriented close reading method based on critical race and whiteness studies and intersectional theory. We have, with the help of Sara Ahmed´s theories of hegemonic whiteness, demonstrated how multiculturalism is partly presented as something desirable and good, partly as something potentially threatening.The discourse of multiculturalism can be said to express the notions of the other, which in the source material manifests itself by ascribing otherness to immigrants. We have, for example, examined how ethnical and cultural differences are highlighted by a separation of East and West, the library?s educational and assisting role in relation to immigrants as a user group as well as representations of whiteness, gender and clothes.

In this two years masters thesis in Library and Information Studies, the Russian Library-Bibliographical Classification (LBC/BBK) and the Chinese Library Classification (CLC) are analyzed with regard to their historical and ideological backgrounds and their respective evolutions. The structure of these classifications is compared with the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), as well as three chosen subjects (History, Politics and Religion). A qualitative comparative textual method is used.The study shows that these classification schemes, created at different times, different parts of the world, and different political systems, have different biases but give priority to the European before other foreign views. Otherwise, they often use a proximity principle. The CLC and the LBC were originally based on Marxist materialist principles but built in totally different ways.