This master?s thesis studies library teaching at two university libraries, Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and Södertörn University in Sweden. The aim of this paper is to study views on information literacy, how these views affect teaching practice, and how the teaching of information literacy is connected to, on the one hand, German and Swedish learning culture and, on the other, the local community of practice at the studied university libraries. The theories applied in this paper are learning culture and community of practice as developed in the works of Judith Ricken and Etienne Wenger. The methods that have been used are qualitative, semi-structured interviews that were conducted at both university libraries.It was observed that the teaching practices were highly connected to learning cultures.

This study examined gray areas within professional ethics of a public library organization and investigated the relationship between the library as an organization and the librarian as an employee when it comes to support and opportunities to make exceptions to rules and regulations. This relationship is then related to workplace issues.Data were gathered via interviews with six librarians who were placed into two focus groups. Library organization documents that contain rules and regulations (guidelines) were examined. The presumption was that conformity between librarians? experiences and actions and the organization?s guidelines will tell us something about workplace conditions.

Mitt examensarbete gick ut på att bygga en hybrid klient som använder sig av samma användargränssnitt som Xcerions redan implementerade webbklient CloudTop. Klienten ska kunna köras utan användning av en webbläsare och i stället vara ett installerat program på datorn. Källkoden till CloudTop, som är skriven i Javascript, kommunicerar nu med kod skriven i C++ med hjälp av en brygga som förbinder dessa två språk. C++-delen hanterar XSLT-förfrågningar, vilket normalt hanteras av en webbläsare. Programmet är även förberett för att utökas med kod som stödjer att programmet ska kunna köras utan tillgång till internet.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine how the educational work of the Swedish public library was regarded in the Swedish library journal Biblioteksbladet at three different periods of the twentieth century, i.e. the thirties, the sixties and the nineties. Using a theoretical framework from the field of professionalization and a methodological framework of hermeneutics, it is shown that the educational work of the thirties can be described as having a focus on free learning whereas the educational work of the sixties can be described as having a focus on public utility. The educational work of the nineties focuses on the information seeking process of the user. It is noted that this development during the century can be understood as a shift of the cognitive authority of the public librarians.

The aim of this study is to examine how the adult students in the Adult Education Initiative called Kunskapslyftet, experience their use of the Main Public Library in Linköping and how the librarians experience the change in their working situation after Adult Education Initiative has started in July 1997. Methods used in the survey are interviews with librarians and students in the Adult Education Initiative. I have also distributed questionnaires to some of the adult students and studied literature that describe students use of libraries. The result shows that the students generally are satisfied with the service they get from the librarians at the Main Public Library. It also shows that what the students mostly asked for, are help to search information about a subject and to find literature in the library.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine gender division in public libraries by reviewing literature and interviewing eight public librarians and two chief librarians. The reason why we decided to investigate this topic is the lack of research concerning sex-segregation in library and information science. By choosing this subject we intend to deepen the understanding of the significance of gender both within the public library and of the occupation in general. Some researchers claim that the low status of librarianship is a result of the large proportion of women in the profession. We want to find out how our informants view the relation between professional status and female domination.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what the data from recent Library- and Information Science studies tell us about the importance of school libraries in a student perspective. Our theoretical framework is built upon Elisabeth Tallaksen Rafste?s concept about the values of school libraries to students. Our aim is to investigate how students between the ages of 15 and 18 use and experience school library.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine the supply of magazines and periodicals for young people at the library. We also examine young peoples reading of magazines and periodicals and compare the librarys selection with what young people read. The main questions of this thesis are: What do young people do at the library on their spare time? What weekly magazines and periodicals do young people read? What range of magazines and periodicals do the city- and the school library have? Where is the department located and how is it designed? What kind of relationship is there between young peoples reading and the selection? To answer these questions we have done an interview with a librarian and a questionnaire among 13-16 year old children. We found that it is not often that young people read their magazines and periodicals at the library.

The aim of this study is to describe how Swedish research librarians feel that their work has been affected by electronic journals. The study focuses on medical electronic journals accessed through consortia agreements via Bibsam, the Royal Librarys Department for National Co-ordination and Development. This thesis includes two main parts: a literature survey and an empirical study. The literature survey shows that since the 1990´s most research libraries are hybrid libraries including both printed and electronic information sources and that librarians tasks to seek and organize information have remained but the tools have changed. Qualitative interviews were performed with four librarians at two university libraries and one university college library on how their work with electronic journals differed from their work with printed journals, which new tasks the electronic journals have brought and which have disappeared and how the librarians professional role has been affected.

The purpose of this study is to examine if digital public libraries are serendipitous environments. Serendipity in this instance is defined as finding something unexpected and valuable, while searching for something else.A survey was conducted at two Swedish digital public libraries, where the patrons were asked to fill in a questionnaire online. The questions were based on the work on serendipitous digital environments by Lori McCay-Peet, as well as considerations of human factors that could possibly influence serendipity.The result indicate that a majority of patrons experience serendipity at the digital library, although it?s still more common to do so at the physical library or on other web sites. The result also confirms the importance of taking human factors into account when studying serendipity.

Turning solar collectors, heliostats, is certainly not a new idea but has been explored for at least two decades. Projects on this subject have resulted in more or less realistic constructions, in a commercial point of view. Far too often the technical goals have had higher priority than the economical, which has resulted in a few constructions having the ability to compete with conventional, fix solar collectors. The economical issues have been given high priority in this project, without decreasing the demands on reliability. The system has been given the following mechanical and electronical properties: One-axis movement, fix heat carrying fluid system, microcomputer controlled movement and automatic protection from overheating.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to gain insights into students? usage and attitudes towards electronic articles and electronic books and how students feel about a change from print collections to digital collections at Växjö University Library. The main questions are: How do different groups of students use the library collections of electronic articles and electronic books? What factors influence the usage of the library collections of electronic articles and electronic books among students? What are the students? experiences of reading electronic books in comparison with reading print books? What would different groups of students think if the literature they need for their studies were purchased in electronic form instead of print? To answer the questions a user study was carried out at Växjö university library. A web survey was sent to students that had a library card and an email address registered at the library.

Our thesis is an analysis of four librarians view on LGBTQ and which implications these views have on the practical work with LGBTQ issues in the public library. The three ideal types we can identify are the excluding, the including, and the normcritical approach. We also want to know if the four librarians? standpoints can be connected to the above mentioned ideal types. We can see that the area where the implementations of the three ideal types are most visible is the way LGBTQ material is displayed in the library space.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to examine how user-friendly the OPAC of the Märsta public library is considered to be.Theoretical basis are HCI and Allwoods definition of usability. Issues are: Is the OPAC suited to its task? Is the OPAC user-friendly? How well does a user accept the OPAC? and What degree of competence is shown by users of the OPAC? The source material consists of six interviews in the form of .avi files. The method I have chosen is qualitative semi-structured interview form. The result is that, based on Carl Martin Allwood?s defini-tion and with exception for the using of help-resources, the usability of Märsta?s library OPAC can be considered less good..

The aim of this Master thesis is to delineate the ideology behind the public library politics in Gothenburg, during 1945-50. The study is an archive survey. To be able to account for the public library politics in Gothenburg during the period, the author has studied documents in the archive of the public library board in Gothenburg. The description of the politics is the source for the research papers analysis. The thesis principal issue, is on what ideological basis the public library politics has been formulated in Gothenburg, during the period of interest? The concept of ideology is defined as a coherent system of norms and values.