The purpous of this master?s thesis is to explore how the swedish public library evolved between 1890-1911, before the state implemented the library reform in 1912. The material used to cunduct the study concists mainly of texts published during the time frame of the thesis in the form of books, booklets and articles from Folkbiblioteksbladet, a journal dedicated to the subject of the swedish public library.Drawing upon Habermas theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere and Bourdieus theories about taste as social distinction and symbolic capital, the thesis seeks to show how the public participated in the evolvement of the public library and which aspects of society that contributed to the public library?s establishment as an institution. The findings are also discussed in relation to previous research of the history of the Swedish public library.

This study aims to examine preschool teachers' thoughts about the child libraries functions. The purpose is to highlight preschool children's early read and writing skills, before they even can read and write, which is a theory called emergent literacy.This is made by conducting five qualitative interviews, with the intention to investigate how the preschool teachers think about the cooperation and the function of the child library, partly for their own work with the children and partly for their organization. By using a tablechart which shows each preschool teachers mostly common thoughts in the interview and by using a model based upon Harrysson and Joelsson (2006) model, which shows the functions of the public library in the society. The results of the study are presented in the four categories of the model which are; to borrow, to learn, to ask and to find, to reside. These are functions that the preschool teachers see with the library, for their work with the childrens' early literacy.

This Master?s thesis aims to study how the concept ?youth? is understood and used in papers and publications about public libraries, written at The Swedish School of Library and Information Science from 1972 to 2002. It does this by answering three questions: Firstly, how is the concept ?youth? formulated in papers and publications at SSLIS from 1972 - 2002? Secondly, has the concept ?youth? changed in the analysed texts during the chosen time and, if that is the case, what constitutes this change? And, finally, what types of consequences for the understanding of the users can this have for the writers and readers of these texts? Discourse analysis is used to analyze how this concept is constituted, transformed and understood. Among the things studied in the discourse analysis is the interdiscursivity and intertextuality of the texts, as well as the meaning of the word, the wordings and modality of the analysed texts.

The aim of this thesis is to discuss selected parts of cataloguing both from a practical and a theoretical viewpoint. It presents the basic grounds for cataloguing of printed as well as non-printed materials. The focus lies on the main entry heading and its author/title problem concerning film. The thesis theoretical part consists of an analysis of central documents dealing with the author concept from both a library- and information science perspective and a film science perspective. The practical part consists of interviews from two Swedish public libraries, which have different approaches on presenting films.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine readers? advice in weblogs - frequently modified web pages with a series of archived entries. We have chosen to study a specific kind of entry that contains information about a book of fiction- not for children and young adults - and the bloggers? comments regarding that same book. The entries are published in ten weblogs that all deal with literature and reading.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to examine how managers in public libraries are managing financial cuts. Questions posed are: What strategies are used by the library manager to handle the cuts and how are the strategies being worked out? What are the consequences of the cuts? How do the managers use their library plans in the work with the cuts and how do the plans change as a consequence of the cuts? Library managers in eleven communities are interviewed about their financial cuts in 2003 and/or 2004. The result shows that cuts are made in different ways. The study analysed the managers statements with a model about strategies created by Oulton.

In this thesis, we are concerned with the many different professional roles that a public librarian, working at a small library, has. More specifically, the purpose is to find out which different roles that librarians believe they have, and which view they have upon those. Furthermore, we are exploring the tendencies that librarians discuss in relation to these professional roles. To pursue this goal, we have used the methodology of focus group interviews, with the unconventional twist that our interviews were done using web chats. This may have the advantage that the informants may present more honest views than when using ordinary interviews due to the anonymous character of chatting.

Since the role of the libraries as merely a place for loans has decreased, the importance of giving the visitors a total experience has increased.The aim of my thesis was to investigate whether a change in the sound environment at the library of Jokkmokk could generate more satisfied visitors, whether they are borrowers or use the library for other purposes. The change in the sound environment was to be effected by means of a background sound experiment in the magazine room at the library. Action research was used as a research strategy and observations and interviews as method to collect data.The experiment was conducted with two selected sounds of nature: birdsong and a rippling brook. The observations and interviews were executeted in three stages: 1. Without any background sound.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the meaning the reading group of the public library has to a number of users. To fulfill the aim the following three questions have been formulated: 1) What do a number of users expect from the reading group of the public library? 2) Which approach/attitude or approaches/attitudes do a number of users have to reading and to talking about reading? 3) How do a number of users experience the ongoing reading group?The research is founded on qualitative interviews with five users that take part in three different reading groups in public libraries. The theories that are used is the theory of three so called strategies - the pragmatic, the traditionalistic, the emancipatory ? and the theory of flow.

National libraries hold large, valuable repositories of often unique materials. How can we ensure that the knowledge is accessible without endangering the materials that hold the knowledge? Digital preservation is meant to solve this problem. With more and more material being accessible digitally, users are expected to do more and more of the finding on their own, instead of being guided by librarians. What kind of knowledge do the librarians have, that cannot be mediated through a system? How is the knowledge of experienced librarians passed on to new librarians? What is the difference between physical and digital materials? I have interviewed senior and junior librarians of Det Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen, Nasjonalbiblioteket in Oslo, the National Library in Helsinki, and Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm to learn about their journey to knowledge of their collections.

User education is an important aspect of university libraries' service to its users. This Masters' Thesis is about online user education. The aim of this study is to analyse five Swedish online user courses in relation to information literacy and learning theory. The web-sites were explored through textual analyses to find how concepts of information literacy and learning theory are expressed. The theoretical framework is based on Carol C Kuhlthau's three levels of user education, Paul Ramsden's three theories of teaching in higher education and Christine Bruce's different aspects of information literacy.

The subject of this bachelor thesis is the debate regarding privatization of public libraries. The purpose is to investigate howprivatization is portrayed in different articles and by different participants. The articles used are from two of Sweden?s largest national daily papers: Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet and two of Sweden?s largest library magazines: Biblioteksbladet and Tidskriften BiS: Bibliotek i Samhälle. The questions asked are: how is privatization portrayed? Whatdiscourses can be traced in the texts? And: can one foresee a future aiming towards privatization? In order to answer these questions Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis was used as atheoretical and methodological viewpoint.The discourses found were named: The value ground discourse, the market liberal discourse and the pragmatic discourse.

The main subject with this master thesis is to take a closer look at university libraries specially Gothenburg University Librarys operation of marketing the librarys user contact, how it receives various users demands and carry out the interactive and strategic marketing. Marketing is planning, structuring, implementation, analysis and controls of carefully formulated programs, designed to bring voluntary interactions and relations with the target markets, for the purpose of achieving organisational and user satisfaction objectives. The structure of this thesis covers three main parts. Part I reflects the researchers approach to the subject. Marketing researchers such as Grönroos, Kotler, Bryson, De Sáez and Gummesson among others are presented.

It is said that libraries are the cornerstones of democracy.What is then the democratic mandate, and how is itperceived by the library staff? That's what I examine in thismaster's thesis. I?ve made 14 phone interviews with librarystaff, from assistants to managers, and examined what theirdaily work routine looks like and what they think belongs tothe democratic mandate. I found that all agree that there is ademocratic mandate, but it is not clearly stated in anydocument.I found seven areas that my respondents saw as part of themandate; availability, diversity, children and young people,equality, public education, free of law and cultural history.These are not sharply defined, but can often move into oneanother.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine what part and importance electronic games play in the life of girls, how the girls use electronic games and what the girls think and say about their use of electronic games. We also intend to examine what girls have to say about electronic games at the public library. Our attempt is to illuminate and bring knowledge to those who work within the library with the selection, purchase and conveyance of electronic games. Method used in the survey is focusgroup-interviews with girls in the age between 12-14 years in three different schools. The findings are related to four different perspectives, theory of child development, from a gender perspective, theories of understanding how young people use computer games and theories to understand the purpose of public libraries.