This masters thesis aims at a discussion about whether the public library will be an educating and cultivating society institution in the future. The method used is a combination of interviews with library staff in leading position and studies of the public librarys relationship to cultivation and adult education in a changeable society. The work concentrates on two main questions. One is about what, and in which way, changes, that are important for the public library and that take place in society now or within the next ten years, affect the future activities of the library. The other is about the public librarys relationship to cultivation in general and in the future.

There are numerous of ideas and theories around the present development in our global society, describing an ever changing era based and propelled by information and communication technology (ICT). How influential has this development been on political visions and intentions and on the business worlds views on important competencies? The purpose of this thesis is to describe the national and international visions of important competencies in the ?Information society?. Through a case study, focused on how the training and consultancy industry apprehends and answer to this change and development, as they often act as agents for new trends in the business world both as accommodators and originators. The growth and speed of the universally available information demands knowhow in seeking, analyzing and managing information, and this competence is crucial today.

Title: Information storage - A growing problem? Authors: Göran Svanhall Pär Truedsson Erik Ponnert Tutor: Bengt Carlsson Problem: Every day companies, regardless of size, produces new information that needs to be stored. In the Information society of today, the characteristics of the information changes both in size and complexity. This results in higher demands on which storage solution that suits the company and their field of business. New and more innovating storage solutions enters the market, but are they necessary to smaller companies of development active in the IT society? Questions to Answer: Is data storage a growing problem for companies of development active in the IT society? How do traditional storage solutions manage the information growth of today? How urgent is the need of a new storage solution? Which features are prioritized in the future storage solution? Method: By performing a quantitative survey we delivered an inquiry to several companies, which answers will help us answering our above mentioned questions. Conclusion: The consulted companies experience no growing problems what so ever regarding their existing storage solution..

The purpose of our master thesis was to investigate how a multicultural society is reflected in childrens books picture books, books for children and young people, published in 2002. We found this issue interesting since children of today experience a change in society, where people of many ethnicities, cultures and religions live together to a greater extent than before. Since children in their everyday life are exposed to these different cultures, we think they also should be exposed to them in the books they read. In order to enhance an understanding of why such books are important to children, especially immigrant children, we have in our thesis included a passage with childrens linguistic development, identification and stereotypes. Other passages concern libraries and their roles in a multicultural society.

It is self evident that our society is an information one. This is true from the things we see around us.The world is now a global village.It just take seconds for communication to be established from one part of the globe to another.What a tremendous achievement for information technology.Among the recent developments of information technology is the scientific wizardary of cyber medicine.The internet has definitely revolutionalised the healthcare industry. Many people in developed countries of the world seek medical information, advice or even buy drugs via the internet.So many websites rise every now and then claiming to provide various medical assistance to patients. But the application of information technology to medicine poses some ethical problems today. It is because of this that cyber medicine attracts my attention in this research.With this research, I hope to offer some recommendations for a morally acceptable cyber medicine .This will help to some extent in solving this all important problem ofcyber medicine for the good of the health care industry and the society at large..

Introduction: In today?s contemporary society individuals can use multiple media- channels to find civic information. Civic information should reach all groups of society and according to previous research young people are relatively hard to reach with this type of information.Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate how young, highly educated individuals in Sweden are using media channels to find and take part in civic information, the expectations they have of the information and if they consider that they need to participate in public discourse.Methodology: In this qualitative study we had a hermeneutic perspective with an abductive approach. We have collected our empirical material by doing interviews with 15 respondents. The respondents are students and were chosen based on both their knowledge and their interest in media and communication since we were looking for a broad view on the subject.Conclusion: Through this study we discovered that young individuals mainly use the social-media channel Facebook to get updated on civic information.

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.

Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union a lot of hope has been put on civil society to help develop Russia into a more democratic society. This study explores the constructive elements in the relationship between civil society and the state in Russia, and how this enables the work toward political development. By using Julie Fishers theory about political development and organisational autonomy I discuss the varying and often complex ways in which civil society and the state interacts. These are often not mentioned in the liberal tradition, which believes that civil society's most important democratic function is to act as a watchdog for the state.There is very limited political space for NGO's in authoritative Russia. The existing oppositional NGO's are important for the political development, but they are few and their impacts on society are limited.

We are living in network society, where information and communication together with the technical development stands in the centre. Characteristic for network society is quick changes, new meaning of time and space, convergence and new possibilities of communication. Network society contains new technical developments, several with thepurpose to improve the possibilities of communication between human beings, which in some ways creates new social demands and expectations. In this study, I focus on the Internet, which is an important channel for the information, communication and marketing in network society. As whole network society, the Internet is constantly developing.This study, implemented with qualitative interviews, has the purpose to give new, deep and interesting knowledge about business to business companies? communication and marketing on the Internet.

Almost all Swedes today have access to the Internet, if not through the home then via the library or work. Despite this, around 20% of the population stand outside the Information society in that they lack in knowledge, assistive usability tools or positive attitude towards technology and its influence on society. The main factors influencing the digital divide in today's society are age, disability and education, while the main reason for staying outside seems to be disinterest.The question about digital inclusion is important as we now stand on the breaking-point between a society where the industry has had a prominent position for private as well as national economy and a digital society where access to the Internet is no longer about prestige, but where significant differences between users' knowledge levels can create a power gap. Gaps in access and use not only reflects already existing socio-economic conditions, but can also maintain and enhance these.It is crucial for the future expansion of Internet usage how today's non-users feel about becoming users. To understand what underlies the motivations not to use computers is one of the keys to get non-users to embrace becoming users.

This Master Thesis aims to study and discuss the occurence of three concepts in some influential cultural policy documents which includes the UNESCO public library manifesto, the Swedish libraries act, the Swedish cultural policy objectives, and a study from the mid nineties which deals with the cultural policy. The questions asked are: -Do the documents mention democracy? In what way? -Do the documents mention the public sphere? In what way? -Do the documents mention information? In what way? -How can we understand the content of the documents through relevant theories about democracy, the public sphere and information? Theories about the Information society are used, as well as theories from Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Schiller and Robert Dahl. The way of method is document studies and abduktion, with influences from hermeneutic theory. The analysis deals with the documents through these concepts: democracy, the public sphere and information and puts forward the content, or lack of content, about democracy in the analysed material.

The Information society creates new demands on the knowledge making individual; besides being literate one has to be information literate. And in the educational society there is an ongoing change from teaching to learning, the focal point being the active student and life long learning. The aim of this dissertation is to within a context of learning and teaching elucidate the relation between user education and subject education by examining what significance the academic libraries user education has for the development of information literacy within students. Some epistemological theories connected with learning is presented as well as aspects of the information search process and of information literacy. Universities and their libraries view of information literacy and the goal of their user education is being focused on in an empirical study.

This study is about an ongoing project in the northern parts of Sweden. Quattro Helix is used as a model for the interaction between four institutional members of the society, in purpose of challenging existing social structures and achieveing community development. The aim is to increase the knowledge about Quattro Helix-model as an approaching method to face the problems in the society through cooperation between Civil society, state, academy and industry. Interviews with eight project members were used as the data-collecting method to capture the perceptions about the project constellations. Information was gathered from two representatives from each of the four actors.

Our study emanates from a socio?cultural perspective on learning and aim to describe and comparetwo different upper secondary school classes and their work with information literacy as a socialpractice in project work and their use of ICT (information and communication technologies). Thequestions at issue in the study are; how the pupils handle information seeking processes, whatdifferences and similarities can be observed in the two social practices and which consequences thesedifferences have in an project work environment.Our choice of research methods to collect data consists of both observations and interviews withpupils and teachers. The interviews performed in the study can be categorized as qualitativeinterviews, and in addition we recorded and took notes during the interviews and transcribed thematerial.The study shows the importance of a good learning environment when it comes to working withinformation seeking processes, that the instructor?s role is of outmost importance and that the pupilsfundamental knowledge of information seeking processes and their information literacy are keysuccess factors when it comes to project work linked to ICT to be productive.

This masters thesis concerns the Public Library Service in Eastern Africa, Tanzania. Our subject was developed through a feasibility study that gave us comprehension that developing countries have individual problems concerning books and libraries. We understood that the main problems were the libraries financial situation and their dependence on aid. We also understood that the libraries do not have the resources to satisfy the society as a whole. The major questions raised in this study are: - How do the regional librarians describe their work situation? -Which role do the Regional Librarians have in society? Data was collected through interviews and observation, and the study is a qualitative case study.