The aim of this master´s thesis is to analyse what factors have an impact on the quality of school libraries. The research questions are: How do some school principals, school librarians and school inspectors view quality in school libraries and what has an impact on quality?How do they view some existing quality criteria?How important do they think the integration of the school library into the curriculum is?The theoretical approach is derived from research about school libraries by David Loertscher and by Sharon Markless and David Streatfield. The empirical material has been collected through half structured qualitative interviews. The informants chosen are principals and school librarians from three Swedish primary schools (6-15 years).

Sweden has a long tradition as a mapmaking nation. Tens of thousands of historical maps,dating from the sixteenth century and onwards are still preserved in archives today, providinga rich resource for studies of city growth and changes in the landscape through time. For morethan ten years an effort has been made by public authorities to transfer this material frompaper onto digital media. Due to modern technology, as for example GeographicalInformation Systems (GIS), researchers have been given improved possibilities to study andanalyze this material. This study uses a qualitative approach, based on both literature studiesas well as map studies.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the process of selecting films at Bibliotekstjänst and at Swedish public libraries. The tools that have been used for analysing and interpreting the results from the interviews and the questionnaire are theory-based models describing the selection process concerning film and Carl Gustav Johannsen?s quality definitions. The result of the investigation shows that Bibliotekstjänst doesn?t really work with any quality definitions in their selection process.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the attitudes of deaf and hear-impaired people towards libraries, information, and culture. The issues are: What are the attitudes of the informants towards libraries and culture? What do reference group theory and the theory of information access-/avoidance implicate concerning the information behaviour of the informants? In-depth interviews with five deaf and hear-impaired university students have been carried out in this qualitative study. The world of deaf and hear-impaired people is presented as well as a survey of political guidelines to make, for example, libraries and theatres more available to disabled people. The research overview analyses scholarly studies on deaf and hear-impaired people.

The purpose of this essay is to analyse the movie Hotel Rwanda from a didactic point of view using the movie?s use of history and historical culture as the main analytical tools. We also intend to problematize the use of movies in teaching focusing on the teaching guide from the Swedish film institution concerning Hotel Rwanda. We choose to work with a qualitative method. The reason why we decided to work with a qualitative method is the intention, as mentioned before, to analyse the movie using the tools we described earlier.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine librarian's opinion of computer filters, to bring order in the debate on these filters and also to encourage future debate on this subject. The main problem is whether librarians themselves think they have the right to limit the public access to information on the Internet by using computer filters. We will also see how many public libraries are using filters, why they have chosen to use or not to use them, what is the librarians' opinion of filters, what rules exist regarding the use of the Internet, and finally if it is legal to use filter programs in public libraries. We have also included a short report on what filters are and how they work. This paper deals only with Swedish conditions on a number of public libraries.

The research of this Masters thesis examines if during a specific period of time, Environmental scanning connected to Swedish public libraries is discussed in journals that are directly connected to the field of Swedish libraries. The method employed was content analysis of articles, news items and ads with the intention of finding out the extent of Environmental scanning and who carries it out and how and what is scanned. The research covers the period from 2004-01-01 to 2004-08-31. During the research period 1387 articles, news items and ads were analyzed. The study focuses on 81 selected published units that directly include references or discussion about Environmental scanning.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the debate in Swedish library press concerning privatization of public libraries. The aim of the thesis stems from a desire to know whether Swedish librarians, as has been alleged in contemporary right wing debate, are politically biased and adherents of socialism. The debate is analysed using the method of idea and ideology analysis, using the tool of ideal types of the ideologies socialism and neo- liberalism. As material I have chosen articles from the magazines Biblioteksbladet and DIK Forum, from the years 1989 to 2010. The reason for choosing the topic of privatization is that it is a controversial question and a topic one could expect to generate a heated debate.Four positions can be discerned in the debate.

This essay is from a student at the cultural science program in Karlstad University. The essay in Culture studies deals about the history use and about the cultural-historical values on buildings. The buildings are from a certain area called the neighborhood Almen and have in the past been threatening many times of demolition. The neighborhood Almen buildings survived a huge city fire back in the 19th century. Since then the buildings has been known as a memory and by the inhabitants and as the oldest part of the city left.

This masters thesis aims to explore the branch libraries in Kalmar municipality and their relation to the Information and communication technology ICTsociety. How do they adapt to and assimilate with, the ICT-society? What are their roles in local social networks and do they make a difference there? To answer these questions, critical discourse analysis, CDA, as founded by Norman Fairclough is applied to four interwievs with branch library managers. Other theorists used are Michel Foucault, Chaïm Perelman and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A solid description of todays society on different levels is also given.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine the opinion about school libraries among principals at the independent schools in the municipality of Lund. In order to fulfil my purpose I used a qualitative method with an introductory questionnaire, which gave background material to the interviews. All seven principals answered the questionnaire and five of them agreed to participate in an interview. Another two interviews were made with two informants, this material was included in the background material. As theoretical framework I have used literature about the school library development, the role of the principal for development and David V.

This master thesis examines the copyright law with the purpose of sorting out the consequences and the effects of the law impacted on libraries. The theories used are mainly discourse analysis and public domain theory. At the centre of the examination is the effects that copyright law bring to libraries and their ability to perform their work. A major part of this thesis is gathered around the analysis of the presumptive key words that give the structures of copyright law the possibility to claim rightfulness. This is an outspoken strategy to illustrate the discourse of copyright law.

LIBRIS is a national library search engine offering information about 6 million books, articles, dissertations and other materials held by Swedish university libraries, research libraries and public libraries. In December 2007 a new version of LIBRIS was launched, developed with focus on usability, simplicity and accessibility. This thesis examines how the new LIBRIS is used, what is working well and what could be improved and also what the users think of LIBRIS. The following report is based partly on a study of usability and partly on a series of tests where librarians, scientists, students and developers have executed a number of tasks while thinking aloud. The users also participated in an interview.

The essay deals with adult education from a local perspective more specifically that ofthe IOGT lodge Leon Garnbetta in Varberg. The material that has been used covers a limited period of time, which stretches from 1883 to 1926.This temperance lodge was founded in 1883 and is still active. The essay provides a historical survey of the temperance movement in Sweden and depicts the ideas behind adult educa­tion, but it also gives a more general historical account of the town of Varberg and its popu­lar movements.By studying handwritten records from the lodge it is possible to establish a picture of its work, activities, discussions, its striving for democracy, educational activities and the principles behind these and finally the lodge's own library which was started at an early stage. All these aspects are then treated in a historical and a political context..