Newspaper articles and media have shown that the use of illegal weight loss compounds, such as ephedrine and Melanotan, is becoming more common among adolescent girls, who are at risk of becoming a new group of addicts. These girls are rarely aware of the risks that the use of these compounds entails and the consequences that could adversely affect their bodies, mentally and physically. The aim of this paper was to investigate the use of and attitudes towards illegal weight loss compounds amongst girls in year three, at Swedish upper secondary schools. In order to do that, a questionnaire was sent out to 120 girls in five different high schools, with varying college preparatory and vocational program directions. My research shows that the use of illegal weight loss compounds, particularly ephedrine, was found among girls in year three, at upper secondary schools. Seven percent of the girls claimed they use, primarily, ephedrine. This result exceeds earlier studies findings on boys' use of anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS).

This thesis is a study of Futurum.kom´s campaign "Lyssna dig rik". Futurum.kom is a regional marketing project between Länsbibliotek Sydost, Regionbibliotek Kalmar and 25 public libraries in the county of Blekinge, Kalmar and Kronoberg. The aim of the Futurum.kom project is to strengthen the role of the public library in society. "Lyssna dig rik" was a cluster group campaign with the aim of making people know about the possibilities of loaning audiobooks in libraries. The target group was lorry drivers in the age of 30-65 with the possibilities to listen to audiobooks at work.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the library needs of fourteen-to-fifteen-year-olds. We have limited the investigation to the significance of libraries for the teenagers in their leisure time. Our focus is the public library with a particular reference to the plans for a new local public library with a youth profile in Malmö. With a departure point in the idea that young people?s use and view of libraries is to a large extent depending on factors such as social and cultural background and lifestyle, we chose to do a qualitative interview study with eight teenagers.

Rapid development in the realms of electronic publishing has had a profound impact on information services in general and the academic library in particular. Since mid 1990´s an increasingly number of scholarly journals and other information resources have been made available electronically. Electronic books are the newest electronic service in the hybrid library and can be seen as the third wave in the digital library. Although electronic books have for a long time existed as electronic texts such as digitalized classics or other texts in the public domain, it is not until recently that e-books have been distributed and packaged in a commercial form. As more e-book models are being developed, libraries are being forced to take e-books into consideration when planning their information services.The aim of this master thesis is to describe the first stage of implementation of the new electronic media, the electronic book or e-book, in Swedish academic libraries.

The purpose of this study is to examine if digital public libraries are serendipitous environments. Serendipity in this instance is defined as finding something unexpected and valuable, while searching for something else.A survey was conducted at two Swedish digital public libraries, where the patrons were asked to fill in a questionnaire online. The questions were based on the work on serendipitous digital environments by Lori McCay-Peet, as well as considerations of human factors that could possibly influence serendipity.The result indicate that a majority of patrons experience serendipity at the digital library, although it?s still more common to do so at the physical library or on other web sites. The result also confirms the importance of taking human factors into account when studying serendipity.

The aim of this study was about how librarians in Sweden work with their web page to reach young people between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Most of the youths in Sweden today use Internet every day for several reasons, and the library should have an obvious place there as well. It shouldbe obvious because almost all youths uses Internet every day and therefore the library needs to be seen there as well to reach out to them. Earlier research has shown that librarians and youths think differently in this question. Youths think that the library web page is more important for the librarythan the librarians do.How do the librarians work with marketing for youths on the web page? Do their policy documents help them in their work?To study this area we have interviewed librarians from six quite large public libraries from different parts of thecountry.

The purpose of this master thesis is to describe and analyse the development of the library history in the municipality of Karlsborg. This is done with a comparison to the library development in Sweden as a whole and in particular to the cities of Lidköping and Halmstad. I have worked according to the following questions: 1. How did the libraries develop before the municipality took over? 2.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study what place public libraries have in local politics, particularly from the point of view of the politicians. To answer this, I have interviewed politicians, participated as a silent observer of a public debate, and studied articles on library politics in newspapers and other press. The results show that politicians in general have a positive view of libraries and good co-operation with library professionals, and that they have a fairly up-to-date view of libraries. They are, however, less interested in library issues in general, and are often complacent with the way things are already running. The newspaper studies show that library issues are usually only discussed when a specific library is somehow in danger.

Little attention has been paid in the literature to libraryassistants in Swedish public libraries. In this bachelor thesis,the professional role, work duties, career prospects and statusof library assistants are examined at two public libraries.Because of a scarcity of published information on thedevelopment of this profession in Swedish public libraries,retired library assistants, as well as currently employedlibrary assistants, librarians and a library head wereinterviewed.Since the ?80s, work duties of library assistants havechanged, with a reduction in some of the more manualaspects of library work, the development of new duties and,overall, an increasing similarity in the duties performed bylibrary assistants and librarians.Additionally, the public perception of library assistants as acategory distinct from librarians was investigated bydistributing questionnaires to library patrons. Contrary toexpectations prompted by statements in the literature, asubstantial portion of visitors was found to be aware of thetwo separate categories.Library assistants at Swedish libraries have no careerprospects, unless they undertake studies in their own freetime and at their own cost, and obtain a librarian degree. Adifference between the situation of library assistants inSweden and corresponding professional categories in a fewother countries is that, at present and for several years, noformal education for library assistants has been available inSweden.

This master thesis is an attempt to study the joint-use solutions between the public library and the public preschool in the local district Kristineberg in the community of Borås. The two main questions are; what kind of joint-use library is the activity at Kristineberg? What kind of advantages and disadvantages do the actors experience from the joint-use activity at Kristineberg? The analysis is based upon the interviews with eight informants with different connections to the joint-use library and public preschool. I also use documental analysis and literature studies. Relevant theories, such as Andersson´s and Skot-Hansen´s analysis of the role of the public library and Bundys, Imhoff´s and Dornseif´s theories about joint-use libraries are presented and later used in the analysis.

The aim of this study has been to examine how people with the chronic disease diabetes are seek-ing information about their disease. The study also look at the sources, which are mainly used, and the information behavior of the participants in this study. Especially in diabetes health care the idea of empowerment is central, which means that the patients need a lot of information to get know-ledge and become empowered. The study also examine the public library as a resource of health information, and for that purpose an examination of the OPAC catalog in two public libraries has been done, using the word ?diabetes? to illustrate the literature and other medias related to di-abetes.

The aim of this study is to illustrate conceptions held by librarians and library and information scientists about weeding practices of printed books in public libraries. The study has been carried out by performing a series of qualitative interviews with librarians and by study of earlier research relating to the subject of weeding. The results have been analysed by utilizing a textual analysis method called idea and ideology analysis using so called dimensions to analyse and structure the results. The results indicate that weeding at Swedish public libraries is carried out by a mixture of objective and subjective methods, with certain statistical elements. Weeding procedures mainly appears to be legitimized according to what one refers to as knowledge of the local community, although lack of lending are cited from time to time.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate how actors involved in a municipal's adult education view students access to information- and library resources. The adult education in the municipal is on contract which means that there are several different actors involved in the realization of the adult education. The raised questions in this study deals with; libraries role within adult education, students needs for becoming information literate and where responsibilities for students access to libraries lies. We used a qualitative method which includes interviews with two principles, a controller, three pedagogues and a librarian. The empirical data is analysed against taxonomies and categories which originates from the theories of David Loertscher and Christine Bruce.

The aim of this master thesis is to measure library service quality in two groups of libraries, newly developed and well established, and to see if there are any differences in the users perception of the dimensions in LibQUAL+. The thesis also examines the different perception of quality for the user groups: undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. Another approach is to test the Swedish translation of LibQUAL+. Different theories on service quality are presented but the main theories are from the marketing perspective. The grounding and development of LibQUAL+ is described as well as the use of the instrument in different libraries.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how libraries market themselves in social media and why they do it. I have studied a certain public library?s process of introducing social media into its marketing mix, the preparations for this process and the effects of these marketing methods.The theoretical framework for this thesis is based on relationship marketing, a theory which focuses on relationships, networks and interaction. My main method has been semi-structured interviews with a librarian at the relevant library, with the manager of the library and with the head of the municipality?s department of communication.The results of my studies show that marketing on social media is a positive and important thing for libraries.