Mediation of fiction has always been one of the main tasks of the public library. The focus on information technology is often seen as a threat and competitor to this task. But technology can also offer new ways to mediate fiction, and the aim of this thesis is to examine how library websites and blogs can be used for this purpose. The research questions are:? What forms of fiction mediating material exist on library websites and blogs?? How is the fiction mediating material presented?? Are there any differences between the fiction mediating working methods on websites and blogs compared with those in physical libraries?The thesis is based on a qualitative content analysis of eight Swedish public library websites and three blogs, and on a theoretical frame work including literature and research on mediation of fiction, library websites and blogs, web design and usability.

The Open Access (OA) movement came to be as a reaction against the enclosure of information resources, facilitated by new distribution technologies. The purpose of the OA movement is to make research results freely available. The aim of this master´s thesis is to increase the understanding of how libraries outside of the academic sphere and within research institutes relates to OA. As a theoretical framework I created two different ideologies, the OA ideology and the nonsharing ideology. I also conducted six interviews with librarians.

For hundreds of years the scientific journals has been the foremost tool for scholarly communication. Publishing of research results is very important for scientists. Often the research is bound to the university and the research libraries supplies the scientist with all journals needed. The last decades the libraries have seen the costs for subscriptions to journals explode. Commercial publishers often lie behind the mostly unmotivated escalation in price.

The aim of this study is to understand how the library environment affects the experiences and feelings of public library users. In order to concretise this, the study sets out from the public library in Bollebygd. We wanted to find out how the library users experience the library environment. Does the library environment affect the meeting between library users? How does the environment affect their moving patterns inside the library? Which environmental factors influence the users' experiences? Our questions were: how do users experience the library environment - as a mediating space for information and culture? - as a social room and meeting place? The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists of qualitative observations and interviews, and literature studies.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to compare the perception and significance of reference work in two countries, Sweden and Germany. This will be achieved by means of a literature review of previous research literature and public documents and a content analysis of articles from two library journals.A first step was to examine the historical development of reference work in the selected countries. In connection with this there proved to be distinct phases in the discussion regarding reference work. These phases with their specific discourses, themes and emphases reflected and thus later were confirmed in the second part of the study.The results show that despite some similarities there are also quite a few differences in how reference work is perceived in both countries. For Sweden, the idea of reference work was introduced relatively early.

The SAB-system (Klassifikationssystem för svenska bibliotek) was created almost a hundred years ago and has often been viewed as insufficient among many academic libraries. KB (Kungliga Biblioteket) has therefore decided to change to DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification) which means that the Swedish libraries are now facing a challenge that involves a change to a new classification system. This is a comparable situation that occured when the SAB-system was created. The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the Swedish library sector´s approach to a new classification system, first to the SAB-system and then to DDC.

The purpose of this masters´ thesis is to examine the attitudes of public librarians towards easy-to-read literature and see whether a connection between these attitudes and accessibility can be made. The study has been performed with a qualitative approach and consists of four depth interviews with emphasis on how librarians relate to and experience easy-to-read literature and its´ users. As complement to the depth interviews, two micro interviews were made. The study can be seen as a follow up to a survey I made 2005, commissioned by The centre for Easy- to-Read. As analytical tools the cultural sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, with his concepts field, cultural capital and habitus, have been used.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the virtual reference service Ask the Library [Bibblan svarar] from a postmodern perspective. Ask the Library is a Swedish online reference service that is run by the country?s public libraries. The postmodern theories of Jean-François Lyotard are used to study how information is managed and transmitted within the service.

The aim of this essay is to examine three separate Swedish public libraries and their respective websites on the grounds of the usability sciences. I firstly had to summarize the main properties of the usability-field in order to gain an extended knowledge of its purposes and possible usage for today?s library systems. I was then able to apply the extended knowledge in the examination of the three library websites and the purpose of determining whether or not they were designed according to the standards set by the usability-sciences.Usability is a rather new science that deals with the dissection and examination of computer-based systems, in order to find the key components that make systems user-friendlier. With user needs being the main focus of its research, usability tries to meet all the different needs of the modern user and construct systems that are less system-centered and more user-centered.

The aim of this Bachelor´s thesis is to contribute to theunderstanding of the headmaster´s view of his role when it comes to developing the school library and in particular the work of integrating the library into the teaching. The basis is three questions: What views do the headmasters express regarding the libraries´ main functions? What views do the headmasters express regarding their own importance for the school libraries´ pedagogical role? How do the headmasters regard the interaction between teachers and librarians, as to how the interaction works? To get answers to these questions we conducted semi-structured interviews with headmasters of secondary schools. As a theoretical starting point, we used our own taxonomy for headmasters. The basis of our taxonomy are from the points by the ?Svenska biblioteksföreningen? and ?Kungliga biblioteket?, which together form a description of a school library integrated in the school curricula.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study the public library identity from a brand perspective, how the public library brand identitity is communicated through blogs and what is communicated in them.The authors analyse the public library identity through selected concepts and a model within Aaker´s and Kapferer´s branding theories. These theories have been applied on literature and blogs as a method. The authors have examined literature about the public library identity in different works within Library and Information Science and political documents that applied to public libraries. An empirical study has been carried out on blogs published by public libraries in Sweden.The result of this study has lead to the identification of different core and extended identities for the public library brand. The core identities have been identified as democracy, adult education (the swedish word ?folkbildning? has no correct translation in english, adult education is the recommended related term) and lifelong learning.

Our state of emergency is good - is the public library prepared for the future?Our state of emergency is good! These are the words spoken by Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson in 1939. He claimed that Sweden had nothing to fear from a future war, we were safe. Today we know it was not so. Is this the situation for Swedish public library of today? Is the public library ready to face the future, or is it only fancy words?We have to form the future, not let the future form us.

The public library´s overall purpose and legitimacy is analways relevant subject for discussion in Library andInformation Science and in public debate on libraries.Libraries are a part of a bigger societal context and are thusinevitably influenced by societal changes. In this thesis wehave studied different roles and functions of the publiclibrary, as seen from documents published by one specificpublic library in Malmö - Garaget. As basis we have usedan analysis model of the library in the knowledge andexperience society made by Jochumsen, HvenegaaardRasmussen och Skot-Hansen (2010). Our purpose has beento examine which ideas and notions on the functions of thepublic library that can be found in Garaget?s documents andin the model ? and to discuss them from a discoursive pointof view.

The purpose of this Bachelor's thesis is to study the reasoning behind classification, cataloging and shelf arrangement of nonfiction graphic novels in public libraries. The aim was to examine which aspects of accessibility influence in which collection nonfiction graphic novels are placed.With qualitative semi-structured interviews we learned how six librarians motivated their choices concerning nonfiction graphic novels. We also interviewed a cataloger from Bibliotekstjänst to examine how nonfiction graphic novels are classified. In our analysis we compared our results to theories and practices concerning alternative shelf arrangements in libraries and legitimization of graphic novels. We found three types of shelf arrangements for nonfiction graphic novels: graphic novel shelf, nonfiction classification code and a mix of the two.

With the purpose of finding the motives behind use, production and reuse of Open Educational Resources (OER), the writer has conducted a qualitative survey. The three main questions in this two years master?s thesis are:? Why do people use others? unmodified OER?? Why do people produce OER?? Why do people alter and reuse OER?The theoretic framework is built around Manuel Castells? network society, with its social and efficiency seeking dimension, along with the Knowledge commons. Some pedagogy is included as well.A web survey was distributed to 796 users of the Connexions OER repository. 95 responses were received.