The purpose of the following thesis has been to study librarians' attitudes towards comics for grown up people. I have compared the attitudes among the staff in two public libraries in Sweden, Malmö public library and Lund public library. I have conducted five interviews with librarians and observed how the comics are handled in each library. I have also carried out a literary study of the history and theories of comics. Initially a definition of comics is presented, and then an overview of the development of comics and of some theories regarding them is offered.

This master?s thesis will try to describe the beginning and development towards a modern public library of the town library in Karlskrona between 1906 and 1959. The specific years refers to the year the library was established and the year it moved to the new library building in the centre of Karlskrona. The aim of the thesis has been to do this historical description and to look at the course from the perspective of the national policies and development for the Swedish modern public library. The thesis is based mainly on reports of the proceedings of the public library and other biographical documents and literature, which has been found in two local archives.

The main purpose of this Master thesis is to illuminate the understanding of local politicians regarding the public libraries and the librarians. We argue that the local politicians´ opinions regarding public libraries and librarians influence the way they act and react in their roles as politicians.In order to achieve the aim of this thesis we focused on following questions:What are the opinions of the politicians:- regarding themselves in relation to the public library?- concerning public libraries in general and its functions especially in the municipalities of their own?- concerning the librarians and their work in a public function?What are the conclusions to be drawn regarding the politicians´ interest and commitment to public libraries in the politic daily-life of the municipalities? Our empiric material consists of qualitative interviews with six politicians elected in two municipalities in the interior of Västerbotten, a northern sparsely populated district. In order to distinguish the various opinions that emerge from the material, we apply a phenomenographic approach. The analysis result we present in three conceivable categories in order to express the different opinions.In general our study points at a positive and favourable attitude to the public library, and all the respondents assume that the municipality ought to offer this service.

This master's thesis aims to study the relationship between two publiclibraries and Berättarministeriet, a foundation that offers free writingworkshops for children in areas with high levels of unemployment. Theworkshops are located in spaces that formerly belonged to the libraries.Questions posed in this thesis are How can the relationship between thelibraries and Berättarministeriet be described?, Why did the relationship turnout differently in the two places? and How does the library see itself, inrelation to Berättarministeriet?The theories used are Ögland's taxonomy for relationships between librariesand local organizations, and Folkesson's theory on interaction betweendifferent professional groups, and this was studied through interviews. Theresults showed a relationship without much interaction, beyond a "handover"of children from one place to the other, with time and shortness of staff beingcontributing factors to the low level of collaboration. Regarding the differentrelationships in the two places the results were not conclusive, butnevertheless showed tendancies of issues in the legitimacy dimension, fromthe library towards Berättarministeriet.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine librarians attitudes and values when it comes to the question if a new media, video games, should be introduced at the library or not. Video games are here seen as media primarily for youths. In our study we also wanted to study the discussions of quality and purchase, when computer games were introduced at the library. In order to answer our questions we conducted nine interviews with librarians working with children and youths, in eight libraries. By analysing their statements, using Maj Klassons theory where she defines the librarians role in three different strategies, we could demonstrate how the librarians reason when it comes to video and computer games, youths, quality and purchase.

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.

The purpose of this study is to explore the possibilities for children?s librarians to extend their competence in the area of reading promotion. The study is carried out within an ongoing reading promotion project directed towards small children from 0-7 years. The study aims to answer the following questions: How do children?s librarians develop new skills in a reading promotion project? How do children?s librarians view a broadening of the concept of reading and how does their approach affect which skills that are acknowledged?The study is mainly based on qualitative interviews with five children´s librarians who all participate in the project.

This master thesis is written in the purpose to discover which attitudes the public libraries in Sweden and Denmark have towards offering popular music to their patrons, how they motivates their choices and why they make the choices they make. The essay focuses on the differences and similarities between the Swedish and Danish libraries and relates their attitudes to the Finnish researcher Sanna Taljas three discourses regarding music policies in libraries.We examined this by sending out a question sheet to public libraries in Sweden and Denmark, the questions were regarding popular music's place in the library and how they build up their music collection. The question sheets were sent out to a total of 116 libraries of which 46 were Danish.The conclusions we drew after our examination were that Danish and Swedish public libraries have a lot in common in the way they regard and distribute popular music in the public libraries. Both of the respondent groups puts user demand high on the priority list as well as having a collection that holds significant works of many genres..

The aim of this study was to examine how children in ages 3 to 4 use the public library with the research questions: What does children?s, in ages between 3 and 4, information behavior look like when they visit a public library in leisure time with a parent? What is the nature of interaction between child and parent, child and the staff of the library, and between child and other visitors? What is the function of the cultural tools in relation to the children?s information behavior? The theoretical frame of reference consisted of Lev Vygotsky?s ?the zone of proximal development? and Roger Säljö?s theory about using cultural tools. To answer the questions I have observed 4 children together with their mothers and siblings at a public library. From the result of the observations I found that every child had their own information behavior. Two of the children only used one kind of cultural tool ? books.

The aim of this thesis was to examine how role players experiences libraries and if the libraries are or can be an arena for activities that involves role play. A public library exists for everyone, but could nevertheless be viewed as a female sphere where women both borrow more books and visit the libraries program activities to a larger extent, compared to men. I asked the question whether men?s reason for choosing a different venue for information and culture was related to the libraries not being able to satisfy their needs. The theory of the thesis was Dorte Skot-Hansen, Casper Rasmussen Hvenegaard and Henrik Jochumsens model that states that the libraries can have four different functions and act as a venue for meetings, knowledge, inspiration and experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in which aspects the public library is affected by its local community. This is re-searched by means of an exemplified case study of a Swedish public library in which we analyze governing documents and the library website with respect to environmental scanning and mar-keting of library services.The research questions are: How are the local community?s demands on the public li-brary being described in the governing document? How is the public library?s response to the demands of the local community being described in the operational plan? How are the demands of the local community, as shown in the governing document and the operational plan, re-flected in the marketing of library services on the library website?Our conclusions are that:The demands of the local community are described in a general fashion in the governing document, but there is a lack of concrete political guidelines.The public library's response to the demands of the local commu-nity is described to some length in the operational plan, but not with respect to economical factors.The demands of the local community are reflected to some length in the marketing of library services on the library website. Many of the overall themes that we identify in the governing document and the operational plan can be found in the marketing directed towards important target groups..

The purpose of this Masters Thesis is to explore the process of selection that librarians face when selecting and acquiring cultural magazines to public libraries. The methods used are qualitative interviews and literary studies. A brief review is given of acquisition policies at public libraries and of cultural magazines and the important role they play in public libraries. Five interviews have been made at five public libraries to find out what factors affect the process of selection when it comes to cultural magazines. Two theories are used as a basis for the analysis of the result of the interviews and literary studies.

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.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the function of public libraries on the social web, focusing on reading promotion and reading stimulation. For an understanding of the larger context regarding public libraries on the social web, we conducted online interviews via email with people in the Swedish library profession, together with a content analysis of various texts on the subject found in library journals and on the Internet. Furthermore to identify the public library's practice on reading promotion and reading stimulation on the social web, we did interviews with librarians at a public library on their use of a blog for this purpose, together with a questionnaire handed out to the library's users on their use and conceptions of the blog.The conceptual framework of this study consists of four key aspects in the theoretical and empirical definition of Library 2.0 presented by Holmberg, Huvila and Widén-Wulff. The results showed that the public library can create a substantial value through its use of the social web, but it?s necessary to have a clear vision of the desired outcome.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how some university students, who are using the libraries extensively, use and experience the public and the university library and what they expect from the two different library types. I also compare their expectations with the different tasks and aims of the two library types. To answer this I have interviewed seven students at the department of history of literature at Göteborg University. I have also studied some literature and research related to this subject, for example user studies about students and libraries and the information behaviour of distance students.