The focus of the thesis is an information search technique called manual query expansion, which aims to improve the retrieval per-formance in a search system by adding terms to the search query. The study looks at the query expansions done by LIS students, and the eventual beneficial effects by using a search help during the search process. The empirical data have been collected thro-ugh an experiment, with an experiment group as well as a control group. The conclusion is that the students need more education in query expansion in order to be able to use it correctly. There are significant differences between the groups in several aspects, for example in the use of search terms, parentheses, and truncation.

This thesis aims to answer the following questions: What type of vocabulary is used in the humanities? What does this implicate when it comes to indexing in the humanities? How do humanities scholars seek information and what type of information do they need? What consequences does this have when it comes to the development of humanities databases? How is the MLA International Bibliography organized? How does its indexing system ? CIFT ? work? How does the MLA International Bibliography correspond with the needs of the humanities scholar? The study shows that the type of vocabulary used in the humanities differs significantly from that used in the sciences. Therefore, Information retrieval is often said to be problematic in the humanities when compared to the sciences. This is, however, not completely true. If consideration is taken to the different type of vocabulary used in the humanities, subject access proves to be more straightforward than has been generally recognized.

The aim of this study was to map the intellectual base at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS) at the University Collage of Borås, and to compare this intellectual base to the intellectual base of the research area Library and Information Science. This was done by analysing the citations in publications published, between the year of 2001 to the first quarter of 2006, by researchers at the institution, using the technique of author cocitation analysis. Cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling, statistical techniques that are traditional i the author cocitation analysis, formed an objective map of the intellectual base at the SSLIS. This map was then compared with three prior studies, that used the same technique to map the intellectual base of the research area. The result shows that the map of the intellectual base at the SSLIS consists of the specialities: user studies, library studies, culture/cultural policy, Information retrieval, bibliometrics and information in organisations.

TitleSystems, Stability and Power. The Discourse of Information in Organizing Knowledge.AbstractThe aim of this Master's thesis is to inquire into the consequences of an unequal distribution of power between information discourses in the field of knowledge organisation. A deconstruction of Jennifer Rowley's and John Farrows introductory textbook Organizing Knowledge from 2000 is related to the major discourses of information in LIS. Questions posed in this study are: What meaning is ascribed to information in the material studied? Which information discourses are given a dominant position? Which are excluded? and: How does this affect the construction of the library and information science student's identity, in relation to practices of knowledge organisation? The theoretical framework is provided by Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's theory of discourse and combined with techniques for text analysis originating from the work of Norman Fairclough.The analysis reveals a strong domination of a cognitive discourse of information that underlines the importance of information systems for the organisation of knowledge.

The purpose of this thesis is to get an improved understanding of what the bases for relevance are, when people in real information need situations make relevance judgements. In order to meet this purpose, an investigation based on research literature is performed. Four types of relevance are investigated: topical or subject relevance, cognitive relevance or pertinence, situational relevance or utility, and socio-cognitive relevance. The investigation also deals with users relevance criteria identified in fourteen empirical studies, in which the users are adults and engaged in oral, textual, and multimedia Information retrieval. Finally, the connections between the user criteria found and the types of relevance are discussed.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the problems in multilingual thesauri, with a focus on the problem of conceptual equivalence between different languages. This study compares the problems and solutions that have been carried out in the Eurovoc multilingual thesaurus with the ISO 5964 ISO 5964 is a guideline for establishment and development of multilingual thesauri. The Swedish descriptors in the subject area "education and communication", from Eurovoc have been observed and compared with the guidelines recommendations. The results show that, the majority of the investigated Swedish descriptors do not present any problem. Most of the terms that are used as descriptors are found in dictionaries and glossaries or appear with high frequency in Swedish websites.

The paper aims to find out how staff and users at two public libraries and one Internetcafeuse Internet. The purpose has been to find out what they find and how they use the informa­tion they retrieve. The studies are based on eight longer interviews with the staff and 33 shorter with the users, who also were observed for a week. The paper includes a background chap­ter about Internet, search tools and the studied places. The following chapters are about pre­vious research, our survey and a discussion with the results, literature and our opinion.We have found out that Internet is usually used for Information retrieval.

The aim of this study is to establish whether there are any specific trends in master theses concerning knowledge organization. To identify the past and current trends a method of content analysis has been applied to 110 theses over a time period of ten years. The results of this study show that there is an increasing interest in subjects concerning for example the evaluation of retrieval effectiveness in search engines on the Internet. A subject which was popular in the late 1990:s was information technology and its different applications. This subject has since that time decreased in popularity.

The aim of this thesis is to examine librarians' view on the knowledge and competence required at a small public library and how they look upon their education in retrospect. Library education in the 1970's and 1980's was mainly practical, a vocational training, but since 1995 the education results in an academic degree in Library & Information Science. Due to this, we focus on the ongoing generation shift in Swedish libraries as an aspect of knowledge and education. The empirical study is based on interviews with librarians working in minor public libraries. The informants form two groups, based on their education; ?old? ones and ?new? ones.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the three search engines Web of Science, Google Scholar and MEDLINE in regards of recovery efficiency and the overlap of relevant documents when it comes to information searching for academic purposes. Furthermore, it raises the question whether freely available search engines and licensed search engines are interchangeable with each other. The empirical data in this study were collected through searches conducted in the three search engines Web of Science, Google Scholar and MEDLINE. Twenty search queries were used and the first twenty retrieved documents for each query were examined for relevance using previously designed criteria. The documents were scored by a binary relevancy scale and thereafter a precision value for each search engine was calculated.

The aim of this thesis is to define digital library, and to investigate a relation between the construction of a digital library and user needs. The main questions to be answered are: 1 What criteria was used when constructing a digital library, particularly concerning issues like purpose, function, design, supply, services, resources and future development of the digital library? 2 How do the digital library system designers and system builders criteria correspond with those of postgraduate researchers? And what factors affect the use? A digital library is an enterprise that gives access to information stored digitally and directly available on the net. The crucial is that the enterprise has a control over collection of information and responsibility to make it available to a defined group of users. In order to investigate the relation between the construction of the digital library and user needs, I have interviewed five key people involved with the work with the digital library and twenty postgraduate researchers from the Gothenburg University.

This thesis deals with the goods classification of the Nordic alcoholmonopolies, viz. Alko in Finland, Rúsdrekkasøla Landsins in the FaroeIslands, Systembolaget in Sweden, Vínbúðin in Iceland, andVinmonopolet in Norway. The focus of the study is the web pages of thecompanies (as they appeared April 10th 2011) and the printed pricecatalogue of Alko, from which information on class division has beenexcerpted. The emphasis lies on the division into product groups and theinformation about origin. Within these facets, which partly overlap insome of the classification systems, the principles of division and thehierarchical relations between classes are studied.

The purpose of this paper is to examine different methods for organisation and retrieval of pop and rock music recordings, and the problems concerned with this organisation. The focus is the question whether values towards pop and rock music influence the organisation of music in major Swedish record collections. As a background for this discussion, the study also discusses how music is organised in these collections, and what kind of problems are associated with their organisation. Also included in the paper is a minor investigation of how problems with the organisation of pop and rock music are dealt with in library and information science, and how values towards pop and rock music are dealt with in society in general. The main focus of the study, however, is an empirical study of how values towards pop and rock music manifest themselves in the pop and rock organisation of six Swedish institutions with major collections of music recordings.

This thesis examines the retrieval effectiveness of two Web search engines. The two search engines are chosen to represent two different types Google as a broad general search engine and Dogpile as a broad general metasearcher. Twenty queries have been used and the first twenty hits for each query were evaluated for relevance. The queries were invented by the authors, based upon their interests and information needs. They were expressed in a general manner, by using one or several keywords, in accordance with the simple search mode available for each search engine.

The national bibliography is an important tool in Information retrieval. Bibliographies as lists of books have existed for centuries, but the national bibliography as we refer to it today, as a directory of the total national imprint, has only existed for about 50 years. The object of this thesis is to investigate music documents in Scandinavian national bibliographies. The method I have used for this investigation is a comparative study of the music departments in the national bibliographies in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The investigation is performed by answering the following questions: How do Norway, Sweden and Denmark live up to IFLAs Guidelines and recommendations for the national bibliography? Can one discern any differences between the three countries in this area? The documents in focus are sheet music and phonograms.