The purpose of IFLA:s Core Programme ALP Advancement of Librarianship in the third world is to further the objectives of the library profession, library institutions and library and informationservices in the less developed countries in the third world. This essay deals with how and with what purpose IFLA/ALP managing developing work in the third world. What roles do they consider that the public library could play for development of the society? The essay also deal with purposes that have resulted in the close cooperation between IFLA/ALP and other organizations.till comparing their work with SIDA and UNESCO. Finaly I try to connect this work with a development theory and a global context..

This master thesis is an attempt to study the interface in itself, where the human meets the machine and the problems that can arise. I study a particular interface, namely the OPAC of Libra III. In 1999 IFLA presented recommendations for what an OPAC shall contain, and in one part of my master thesis I compare Libra III with these recommendations from my opinion. In another part of my master thesis I make an investigation where I let five by me chosen persons answer some questions from me, both by doing and verbally. I draw the conclusion that Libra III follows most of the recommendations of IFLA in a sufficient way.

During the late 1990s a movement with the intention of forming independent libraries emerged on Cuba. They were seen as an alternative to the public libraries which were supposed to be suffering from censorship by the Cuban government. The purpose of this thesis is to compile and bring structure in a debate regarding public libraries on Cuba and what have become known as independent libraries. In this thesis a textual analysis has been approached for examining articles, websites and reports concerning what attitudes and position the library support organizations Friends of Cuban Libraries FCL, Cuban Libraries Solidarity Group CLSG and IFLA/FAIFE have regarding the two different library types. These positions is throughout the survey connected with the concept of intellectual freedom.

The subject of this master thesis is the school library and how we find its potential unutilized. We look at this problem in connection to the democratic assignment that the Swedish school has. The purpose is to elucidate what the democratic assignment consists of and to establish the role that the school library ought to have in this assignment. To describe the democratic assignment we examine and interpret the documents that regulate school and library activities today, including UNESCO/IFLA School Library Manifesto and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. We use critical ideology analysis because we consider democracy to be a sort of ideology and have a critical view of how the school library is used or rather not used in school.

In the years 1996-2001 the European Union`s copyright-directive was drawn up. This directive led to much lobbying activities from both copyright holders and library organisations like EBLIDA and IFLA. The Internet and filesharing networks like Napster had led to strong reactions among some copyright holders. Internet gave people an easy opportunity of accessing copyright protected material. Some researchers of copyright have written books where they state that the copyright holders utilize authors fear of illegal copying to strengthen the copyright laws, and by that benefit economical.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine whether the term elasticity is relevant and functional to apply to public library organisations. Another aim of the thesis is to relate the term elasticity to public library organisations in a network society. Sociologist Manuel Castells provide the theoretical framework on the network society. Three investigations (meant to complement each other) in two Swedish public libraries seek to give answers to these questions.To be able to examine which areas of public library activity are elastic, I make a rough definition of what public library organisations consist of ? nine activity fields are identified using IFLA?s guidelines in combination with Swedish law of public libraries.

This study investigates to which degree international developments in cataloguing have influenced Swedish cataloguing rules (KRS). The results show that KRS has been influenced by international developments in cataloguing to varying degrees. The study also shows that KRS has been influenced by Anglo-American cataloguing rules, previous editions of Swedish cataloguing rules and by the work undertaken by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions..

Old industrial sites bear witness of the unsustainable industrial developments in the past. Today many of them stand abandoned and empty, old structures lacking function in our present society. We have in this thesis participated in a visionary student competition arranged by IFLA, International Federation of Landscape Architecture by developing a proposal based on a vision of how Stockholm can stimulate a greener development. We have done this by turning an unsustainable industrial site in the city into an ecological node; Arboretum Lövholmen. Our aim is to develop an entry for IFLA?s visionary student competition by creating a new sustainable design for the industrial area of Lövholmen in Stockholm. We have worked with the following research questions: How can we create a visionary design proposal for Lövholmen that promotes sustainable development with the help of ecological design? How can the competition format be a design tool? How can the working process developing a competition entry progress? The competition demands have shaped our working process and functioned as a platform for the structure of this thesis.

The purpose of this paper is to examine different attitudes regarding freedom of information and how libraries should fulfil their information-task represented by four organisations. The organisations are important in shaping the Swedish public libraries in different ways. The purpose is to examine in what ways their definition of information freedom may differ from one another and what that means in defining the public library. For the survey the qualitative textual analysis has been used for examining the documents and websites that are part of the debate about the public library and information freedom. We chose to interview representatives of four organisations that in different ways influence the shaping of the public library.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine how Dublin Core corresponds to the findings in the IFLA report Functional requirements for bibliographic records FRBR, and what consequences this correspondence has on the usability of Dublin Core as a bibliographic standard. While the study describes the conceptual model of FRBR and the entities work, expression, manifestation and item, its main focus is the mapping of attributes and relationships to the user tasks defined, namely to find, identify, select and obtain entities. The study makes a comparison between data that FRBR rates as highly important for any user task, and the elements defined in DCMI Metadata Terms. The outcome of the comparison is then analyzed as to how it affects Dublin Core's possibilities to assist in the different user tasks, and common problems are discussed. The results show that problems in expressing attributes and relationships through Dublin Core elements concern all of the four user tasks.

The aim of this two years master thesis is to explore the relationship between public libraries and deaf adults. I want to know if deaf adults are a prioritized group in Swedish public libraries. Deaf adults use Swedish sign language witch is a visual language and differs from Swedish. I discuss the difference in Swedish Sign Language and Swedish and the importance of Sign Language literature. I also explore what methods can be used for mak-ing the library service towards the deaf group more customer centered and service oriented.The lack of sign language knowledge among the library personnel can lead to communication barriers.

Enligt IFLA:s mångkulturella biblioteksmanifest och Unescos folkbiblioteks- och skolbiblioteksmanifest har folkbibliotek ett ansvar att främja kulturell mångfald. Samtidigt påvisar forskning att folkbibliotek kan fungera som en förlängd arm i den så kallade integrationsprocessen. Med detta som bakgrund har uppsatsen som syfte att studera bibliotekarier vid ett stadsdelsbibliotek i Uppsala och analysera de villkor som präglar deras verksamhet riktad mot invandrare. Uppsatsens teoretiska ramverk är inspirerat av ett sociokulturellt perspektiv så som det beskrivs av pedagogikprofessorn Roger Säljö i Lärande i praktiken ? Ett sociokulturellt perspektiv och Lärande och kulturella redskap: om lärprocesser och det kollektiva minnet.