The aim of this study is to look at censorship and attempted censorship of books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) people in public libraries in the USA. People from the public can submit formal challenges to a book at the library when they find the material offensive which can lead to those books being taken away from the library shelves. The questions asked are why GLBT- literature is being challenged, and sometimes banned, and how do the libraries deal with the challenges to the books.It is nowadays the people from the public, rather than the government or the librarians that are behind many cases of removal of books with homosexual themes. The study presents some of the fictional GLBT- literature that has been cause for much controversy in the USA. All the five examples mentioned are children?s books concerning GLBT- themes and are among the most challenged books in American libraries in the past twenty years.

This two year masters thesis is written in the scientific field of library- and information science. The purpose of the study is to investigate the collaboration between teachers and librarians in different types of school library organisations. Two school libraries with only the school as a target group, two integrated public- and school libraries, one school library division and one public library that provides the school with school library services has been studied. The study takes place in Uppland.The theoretical framework used is based on Montiel-Overall and her four models of collaboration: coordina-tion, cooperation, integrated instruction and integrated curriculum. The first research question focuses on the col-laboration between teachers and librarians based on each of the TLC-models.

Integration projects at two libraries: multiculture, meetings and possibilities takes its start in the fact that Sweden is populated with people from many different nations. The libraries have a unique possibility to arrange integration projects as a supplier of culture and information. This case study focuses on two integration projects arranged by two libraries; the library of Jönköping with the project Brobyggarbiblioteken, and the library of Kortedala which was involved in the project Ordbron. My purpose is to find out how these two libraries chose to work with integration, migrants and multiculture. The aim is to examine if the library could function as a passway to the Swedish society, and to find out if the library can facilitate for migrants to maintain contact with their native country.

The aim of this Master thesis was to examine how libraries at Swedish colleges and universities make Open Access journals in physics available to users. We examined if, where, and how the 50 Open Access journals that are listed in the Directory of Open Access (DOAJ) under the heading Physics (General) were made available to the public at 19 Swedish colleges and universities. We also examined possible patterns regarding qualities in the Open Access journals and to what extent the libraries made them available. For this descriptive statistic was used. The selection of library portals that were included in the study were those Swedish colleges and universities that teach physics.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how comics, here defined as a combination of text and images, are handled by the libraries in regards to subject analysis, classification and indexing. A comparative approach has been used in this study. First, common practices, methods and theories concerning subject analysis developed for documents consisting of text or images are presented. Then the current systems at two special libraries, specializing in comics and consequently dealing with both text and images, are examined and related to the above mentioned practices, in order to discover differences and similarities.

This master?s degree thesis stems from the new possibilities that digitization offers preserving and increased public accessibility of our cultural heritage, but also how a lack of co-ordination and standardization may result in short-term projects and lack of quality. The purpose of this thesis is to examine a selection of public libraries? digitization projects. The two questions posed are:How does a selection of public libraries conduct their digitization projects concerning a) goals and objectives, b) execution c) what resources they encompass?How well does their work agree with the recommendations that exists for goals, objectives and execution?To answer the questions interviews were conducted with persons in various ways involved with the digitization projects.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to discuss and analyse co-operation between public and academic libraries. The political changes that were initiated during 2004 have come to alter the conditions for Swedish libraries. The Swedish library law was changed at the 1st of January 2005 and co-operation between libraries is now statuary even if there is no description of how the new mission is to be executed. At the same time an extensive report about the Royal Library and its role as the Swedish National Library was presented. This report also recommended an increased co-operation between different types of libraries.

The aim of this issue is to study how Swedish public libraries deal with the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of information in connection with public use of the Internet. The authors intention has been to find out whether the public use of the Internet has caused ethical problems for library workers and how the libraries solve situations when they consider their principles violated by library users. The authors study the debate on the issue in a couple of Swedish library magazines published during the late 1990s and they also give a few examples from the USA during the same period. They study the ethical principles and directives for schools published by the Swedish Board of Education as they claim that many of the public library users are students who bring along their ethical conceptions and thereby affect the ethical climate of the libraries. In their study the authors refer to ethical rules given to librarians by their trade union DIK and to the conclusions drawn from the hearing Good Ethics on the Net held by the Swedish IT Commission in 1998.

In this master thesis, I investigate four Public Librarys´ program activities. The purpose is to explore what the library program activities contribute to as a part of a well functioning democracy. The theoretical points, I have brought from political science. I assume three different ideals of democracy; electoral democracy, participation democracy and deliberative democracy. All have different views on what can be characterized by a well-functioning democracy.My empirical material consists of library program guides, the libraries´ target documents and interviews with staff at the libraries who work with or have overall responsibility for program activities in their respective libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine which role public libraries play or could play within bibliotherapy. The study is based on qualitative interviews with five librarians who, in one way or another have experienced bibliotherapy activities. Further, we have interviewed two treatment assistants and one counsellor, who have cooperated with the librarians, to get their view. We have used the following research questions: Which bibliotherapeutic activities, if any, are pursued in public libraries in Sweden, and how do they look upon bibliotherapy? What role do public libraries play/could play within bibliotherapy? Ever since the term bibliotherapy was coined in the beginning of the twentieth century, the definition has been under debate. We have identified four main subjects of discussion.

The aim of our Master´s thesis is to investigate the development of the different libraries in the former communities of Flisby and Lofta during the former part of the twentieth century. We ask the following questions:How did the libraries in Flisby and Lofta develop between the years of 1905 and 1952?How can we understand the libraries? dependency of funding of different kinds? We have used case study as a method, and we have adopted a source criticism approach. We have mainly used our local archives and among other things we have investigated various sorts of protocols, annual reports, auditor?s reports and the accounts that were sent to the Board of Education.

This master thesis aims to examine how public libraries in Sweden are practically and ideologically equipped to deal with e-books, outside of the dominant distributor Elib. The study also aims to find out what?s required of the book market and the public libraries to make further progress in the question of e-books. In Sweden e-books are still representing only a small amount of all the library loans and an even smaller amount of the commercial book market.The methodological and theoretical ground for the thesis is Grounded Theory, and the survey is based on interviews with publishers, librarians and distributors.The conclusions of this thesis are that the public libraries lack resources to invest in e-books, and that they also lack in knowledge about the media and its readers. It also exposes that both internal and external collaboration efforts need to be further developed.

The aim of this master thesis is to study how the development of a public library by means of ideas and methods from the private sector can be related to traditional core values. We base our study on institutional theory, which focuses on norms and values in an organisation, and new institutional theory, which focuses on how organisations are influenced by changes in the environment. We also use New Public Management with a market focus to analyze the implications of a development towards a more market oriented view.The method used is that of a case study of a new library concept, Idea Stores in London. Idea Stores are a number of new public libraries in Tower Hamlets developed from the results of a major opinion survey about libraries. The Idea Stores combine traditional library services with elements of adult education and lifelong learning in a partnership with local learning centres.

Social exclusion is a problem in today?s society that we feel public libraries can help resolve since they are based on the idea of equality and openness. The purpose of this essay is to examine how public librarians think and reason about the concept ?integration? as well as what role public libraries can play in immigrants? integration process. With Jose Alberto Diaz? theory on the integration process, and Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen?s model for analysis of the local library profile as theoretical framework, we analyzed the responses from two qualitative interviews in small groups of 2-3 librarians from two different public libraries.

The aim of this study is to examine Swedish public libraries preservation of rare book collections. In this study a rare book is rare when it become over a hundred years. I will investigate if libraries have any written policies or plans when it comes to preservation and also what the librarians? opinion about rare book collections are. This is of interest because public libraries have a lack of responsibility when it comes to preservation.