The main purpose of the culture is to serve people and represent the people's social will and freedom. Culture does not exist in a vacuum but shaped and framed by political and artistic structures that are not neutral, and this is why the artwork itself cannot be an independent business. The public function of art can be understood as a defense of the ideals of democracy. But today, when political power is often replaced by hegemony, the role of art and functions are changing. How these changes reflect to the identity, reality and truth of society? What political functions are fulfilled when art becomes ?public?? The issue of democracy is linked question of people?s power in a democratic society where power is legitimized in social space.

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary scientific subject which connects biology, biomedicine and information science. Bioinformatics generates new biological knowledge by using computer methods and biological databases and can thereby play an important role for the understanding of diseases and be used for development of new medicines. The appearance of bioinformatics has thereby had a big impact on biomedical research.In this study, I have examined bioscientists' use of bibliographical databases, bioinformatic databases/web sites and bioinformatic tools and their needs of support concerning these resources. I have also examined which support the scientific libraries offer their users concerning bibliographical databases, bioinformatic databases/web sites and bioinformatic tools and have compared it with the needs the libraries think that the users have and the needs the users state that they have.The results from the study show that there is a wish for library support concerning bibliographical databases, bioinformatic databases/web sites and bioinformatic tools. The wishes of the respondents are in contrast to the libraries' view about bioscientists interest concerning bioinformatic databases/web sites and bioinformatic tools.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine what intentions handbooks, laws and regulations have had about children and childrens literature, as we think that they can serve as guiding principles for childrens libraries in Sweden. The questions are: what signals have the childrens libraries got from the documents concerning the view of children and childrens literature during the 20th century? What has the social opinion about children been during the 20th century? How have children been seen during the 20th century? The method we used is a qualitative source analysis of mention above documents seen from a hermeneutical point of view. This analysis is woven together with the social opinion on children during the 20th century. Our results show that the aim of childrens literature before 1945 was a pedagogic and moral one.

The aim of this study is to explain and analyse political steering of public libraries in Swedish municipalities and the roles of politicians and administrators in this process. To fulfil this purpose five municipalities have been studied. It is argued that both politicians and administration have to be included in a study of steering and that the relation between politicians and administrators should be seen as an interplay. Planning and evaluation are discerned as the two main activities in the steering process. The material in this study consists mainly of information collected through interviews with library responsible politicians and library managers in all five municipalities.The results show that libraries are considered politically uncontroversial and that politicians see little need for political interference and steering.

The wide spread of the Internet and new information technologies in recent years has come to effect how libraries manage and disseminate information. Search engines like Google are widely used by people who often find the information retrieval systems of libraries to be too complicated. In 2004 Google announced plans to digitise five major library collections. Organisations representing the publishing industry and authors have since then filed lawsuits against Google claiming that Googles scanning of library books infringe the rights holders copyright. Due to Googles potential impact on libraries this thesis aims to examine how Googles digitisation project, Google Book Search, has been received in the library community.

The purpose of this Masters thesis has been to examine the importance of libraries for girls leisure time in secondary school. Focus has been on the use of the library as a leisure activity. Interviews were carried out with six girls of the ages 13 to 16. The conclusion of the study is that the library is of importance for the girls mostly through its books. Reading turned out to be an important leisure activity for the girls and the books provided by the library were of significance for their identity development.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to study how librarians experience reference work. We wanted to get a better understanding about librarians assignments through the study. We chose to limit the study to public libraries, and to the south of Sweden. The questions used in our study are: How do librarians interpret the conception of reference work? What values do librarians have concerning reference work? How do librarians experience reference work? How do librarians look at different roles in reference work? We chose to use a fenomenographically inspired method.

This thesis is about School libraries and the honour "School library of the year". I have examined the questions - Whats to say about school libraries in the curriculum and the library law? - Who administer the honour "School library of the year" and whats demanded to get it? - What have made the school libraries I have examined to school libraries of the year"? As theory I have used the Taxonomies of the School Library Media Program by David V. Loertscher. I have given a background to and defined the school library as a function, a room and in the teaching among others.

This master's thesis studies Utländska biblioteket, a 19th century foreign literature subscription library in Karlskrona, Sweden. The aim of the thesis is to investigate Utländska biblioteket between 1835?1864.The material consists primarily of primary sources from the archive of Utländska biblioteket. The main primary sources are the library's accounts book, its minutes, and two book catalogs. Using analytical tools from Jürgen Habermas, feminist criticism of his ideas and from Pierre Bourdieu, as well as results from previous research on older library forms and female organization in the 19th century, the thesis answers questions relating to the library as a society, its members and its book collection.The investigation shows that Utländska biblioteket was a subscription library as well as a book circle.

Libraries exist around us and for most of us they are a part of our every day life. But how often do we stop and think about their meaning?Libraries in fiction are usually not the center of the narrative, they play a role quietly in the background and offer a backcloth to the story. Yet they are a vital part of the story. Without them a big part of the magic in the stories would be lost.And what is their role in our lives? What do the libraries mean to the books they harbor, the readers who seek them out and society in which they have their axiomatic role?This essay?s focus is my story ?Between the shelves?, which is about the young girl Julia and the mysterious passageway she discovers in her local library.

Uppsatsens syfte är att utifrån ett New Public Management-perspektiv undersöka i vilken utsträckning visionsstyrningsmodellen i Halmstads kommun följer New Public Management och utifrån det undersöka vad det resulterat i. Uppsatsen grundar sig i en intervjumetod där ledande politiker och tjänstemän från kommunen intervjuats. Den teoretiska ansatsen utgörs av en New Public Management?teori grundad på olika dimensioner av New Public Management. Uppsatsens huvudsakliga empiriska material kommer från de intervjuer som genomförts.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and understand the existing factors behind the selection of foreign newspapers in Swedish public libraries. We wanted to study this subject because the political situation in many countries is reflected in the newspapers and can cause difficulties in the selection process. Examples of this can be how to avoid newspapers with political propaganda and with censored content. Another reason for our interest in this subject is based on our prejudice that newspapers from other countries are important for people with foreign background. To answer the question we have conducted qualitative interviews with five persons who are responsible for the purchase of foreign newspapers at four libraries.

This paper describes the development of direct and indirect service at the former Gothen­burg city library. This was during this period of time not the public library of the town, but a scientific library mostly serving the college, although also open to the public. Furthermore the services offered in Gothenburg are compared with those of the two old Swedish university libraries in Uppsala and Lund. The investigated direct serviceforms are "making material available", "guidance", and "localities". The indirect service areas are "the catalogue" and "the personnel and their competence".The conclusion is that the differences weren't that big and that Gothenburg city library was a modern library providing about the same services as you could find in Uppsala and Lund.

On the first of January 2012, a new public authority was formed in Värmland, due to a new legislation on public transport. The first task for the new public authority was to produce a plan for the development of public transport. In order to do so, it had to execute an extensive consultation process about the long-term goals of public transport. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate how a public authority can use a consultation process as a means to clarify accountability and produce unified goals. To answer that, I have done a case study about how the new regional public authority in Värmland for public transport has acted in the process of writing a plan for the development of public transport.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the library discourses concerning the phenomenon and concept of digital libraries in Swedish library press 1980-2002. What changes can be identified? The questions are: what is said about the conditions for the phenomenon; how is the concept of digital libraries used; who makes these statements; what are the relations between these discussions and the library context in which they are made? Five Swedish library journals, BBL/Biblioteksbladet, DIK-forum, Human IT, Svensk biblioteksforskning and Tidskrift för dokumentation, were examined. The method used was discourse analysis. The theoretical starting-point was Foucaults discourse theory.