This master thesis is about access to literature translated into Swedish sign language for deaf at the public libraries. It is by now a well-known fact that there is produced very little literature in sign language for deaf. This is so even though the policies for the library nationally and internationally, and the public law for libraries in Sweden says there should be literature available for all groups of disadvantaged people. People who have problem reading ordinary ink books have the right to get the book adapted into a medium accessible for them. The goal of the Swedish law for disadvantaged says that in 2010 Sweden should be accessible for all irrespective of weather you are deaf or not.

This master's thesis reports on our investigation of how the public librarian's professional identity is formed and what it is formed of. We have considered factors such as: education, competence and daily tasks. In order to fulfil this aim we have used a literature study on concepts such as competence, education, professional identity and profession. We have also carried out an empirical study where we have interviewed nine librarians on public libraries. The method of analysis is qualitative.

Flustret is a restaurant and an entertainment place situated by Svandammen in Uppsala. It all began in 1842 as a café serving coffee, tea, chocolate and pastry. During the years the building has had numbers of different owners. The owners of today are running Flustret in a same friendly spirit that has been characteristic from the beginning. The buldings history is now approaching an age of 165 years. Throughout the years different historical layers have been placed on top of each other, leaving a layer of patches.

The topic of this essay is information seeking for children and young people in municipal libraries. This is based in the growing need for information seeking skills in the Information Society. Policy documents on the topic are scrutinized and related to a concrete praxis. Data has been collected through two case studies; one carried out in Ronneby and one in Trandared, Borås. These cases where chosen because of the existence of a local policy for library skills and information search for 6 to 12-year-olds.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

During the past decade, consumer health information-centers have been developed at the hospital libraries in Sweden in order to meet the increasing demand from patients and their relatives concerning consumer health information. In 1993, the hospital libraries in Falun, Västervik and Karlstad launched a consumer health information database called PION. The aim of this Master's thesis is two-fold. My first aim is to describe and discuss the principles of user-oriented evaluation. In my attempt to convey the theoretical discussion into the everyday life of librarianship, my second and most important aim is to conduct a user-oriented evaluation of the database PION.

The web sites of libraries are to a large extent their public face and to help market their services, the web sites must have interesting and regularly renewed content. They must also be visually attractive and easily used, and thus be well structured and have a well functioning navigational system. The web masters' awareness of the ability of web sites to attract users to the site and also to the library, as well as their knowledge of suitable content and site construction, is crucial for how successful the web site actually is at marketing the library. The research question is: How do the studied web sites function as marketing sources and service providers for the libraries, and are the web masters aware of the importance of the web site? The purpose is to investigate how the library personnel looks upon the web site as a possible way to increase the popularity of the library among the public, and to study the construction and content of the library web sites to find out how well these serve their purpose.

The purpose of our thesis is to take a closer look at what lies behind the display of fiction in public libraries. Through interviewing ten librarians and analysing their statements, it examines the mechanisms behind the displaying of books. The analysis was conducted through the application of two different theories, one by Aant Elzinga and one by Douglas Raber. Elzingas theory concerns methods of working, while Rabers theory concerns the purpose of public libraries and attitudes towards power. The following conclusions were drawn from analysing the statements.

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to increased knowledge concerning students? information seeking in an electronic environment. Using a qualitative approach; focus groups interviews, a total of nine nursing students were interviewed in two groups. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed with an analysis tool based upon Lucy Kuntz?s, Gary Marchionini?s and Carol C Kuhlthau?s models of the information seeking process.

The main purpose of this thesis has been to investigate librarians opinions about the need for and possibility to use non-roman script in library catalogues. We have also investigated the routines of handling materials in non-roman scripts in two Swedish libraries. The investigation was made in the light of the recent shift in character set in the Swedish National Library Catalogue Libris. This change will enable use of multiple writing systems in the future.Our findings are that a multicultural society requires special consideration to the needs of citizens who speak other languages than the majority of the population. This becomes difficult when the languages spoken have a different writing system than the one used by the majority.

I det här arbetet vill vi ta reda på hur historiska spelfilmer förhåller sig till historiemedvetande. Det vi främst fokuserar på är hur högstadieelever relaterar till historisk spelfilm och hur deras historiemedvetande påverkas av den audiovisuella historieförmedlingen i skolan, i avsikt att framställa en matris för hur undervisning med hjälp av film ska ske. Ytterligare ett inslag i denna uppsats utgörs av en redogörelse kring hur man praktiskt går till väga när man arbetar med film i undervisningssammanhang. För att uppfylla syftet har vi använt oss av en kvalitativ metod med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Idag konkurrerar skolans kunskapsmonopol med populärkulturen.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between librarians and library support staff in public libraries regarding status, distribution of work and working climate. We were interested to know if there is a conflict between the two occupational groups and how it can be explained. We also wanted to learn what the future holds for the library in terms of professional categories and tasks according to library staff of today. This study is based on twelve qualitative interviews with four heads of libraries, four librarians and four library assistants. Three theoretical approaches were used in the analysis of the interview material: professionalization strategies, conflict theories and theories from group psychology.

The aim of this thesis is to mediate to the reader an image of Chinese classification systems and in what way the methods of classification have progressed during time. The tradition of classification in China is very old and dates back more than two thousand years, but it wasnt until the downfall of the dynastic era in the beginning of the 20th century, that Chinese libraries and methods of classification were modernized. This thesis also identifies the development of Chinese librarianship which is of old age since Chinese literature stretches three thousand years back. The main question is in what way the values of three different philosophies are reflected in five classification systems compiled between 1953-1975. The three philosophies are Daoism, Confucianism and Maoism/Mao Zedong Thought.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine virtual reading groups, and which meaning the users perceive that the virtual reading groups offer. In addition, the study inquires which details can be improved to further amend the needs and wants among the users of virtual reading groups. Through these outlines, it is discussed how libraries and librarians can make use of virtual reading groups as a resource. The study is based upon qualitative interviews, consisting of asynchronous e-mail interviews with a total of sixteen members in two different virtual reading groups.

Librarians like to think that libraries contribute substantially to the progress of research. However, libraries still seem to have serious problems getting integrated in their parent organization on equal terms with other parts of that organization. The degree of integration of the library is thus the main topic of this thesis and the purpose is to examine how the interaction between librarians and scientists is formed and can be developed. That issue leads to concrete questions concerning what part librarians play in the scientists work and which factors influence the cooperation or lack of cooperation. We have chosen, for reasons of comparison, to make two case studies; one is a branch of a university library and the other is a library in a large pharmaceutical company.