The aim of this Masters thesis is, with an exploratory stand, to examine the thoughts regarding gender perspective at childrens library service that are expressed from childrens librarians as well as the staff in administrative management. The purpose of the study is to generate ideas for further research and discussion regarding a gender perspective on the childrens library service. A total of eight interviews have been carried out. Three persons at the administrative level and five childrens librarians were interviewed. We also have examined if a gender perspective is expressed in the control documents, from international level to a local level, which the libraries could use when developing and planning their work.

Our aim with this Master thesis is to show how some selected actors react on the decrease in reading amongst people within the LO group the Swedish Trade Union Confederation. The methods used are interviews and literary studies. The theoretical background of our discussion is based on the theories and definitions of Bourdieu. The actors we investigate are the public libraries, some various trade unions, the adult education Organization ABF, the cultural affairs committee. We discuss from what view on their own role/obligations respective the society they act and what barriers that prevents reading, the actors consider exists within the group of adults less familiar with reading.

The purpose of the master thesis was to reflect and analyze music library activities and policies in the public libraries in the area around the city of Borås, in the south-western part of Sweden. With this thesis I also wanted to look at the interaction between the public libraries, the music school and the music associations in the same area. To investigate these matters, qualitative method was used in the form of interviews with seven librarians from seven different libraries and five representatives of different local music organizations. Other methods used were observations and source studies. The literature used discusses the role of the music department of public libraries as well as that of a music librarian working in a public library.

This Master thesis aims to study the relation between Swedish governmental cultural policy and cultural events at two Swedish public libraries. The Masters thesis demonstrates how national cultural policy regulates every part of the public library. This demonstration is a result based upon national cultural policy documents and interviews with employees at two public libraries in Sweden. The conclusion that national cultural policy regulates this part of the public library is drawn with help of the circle of culture as applied in Culture Studies and Michel Foucault theories of power. The thesis contains the answer of four questions, two involving cultural policy and the other two events at the library.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how disabled people who receive the shut-in-service in one community define service quality. The purpose is also to examine the shut-in-service and to look at the users' context. Answers are sought to the following questions: - How do users experience the service quality of the shut-in-service? - What kind of service does the shut-in-service offer to the user? - How can the user be described and which are his/her requests? The analysis is based on theory about service quality by Christian Grönroos. The theory makes a distinction between two kinds of service quality, technical vs functional quality, as experienced by the user through the profile of the organization.

The Swedish academic libraries have gone trough radical changes during the last decades. The development of information technology, the educational expansion and new pedagogical ways of learning within the higher educational system have changed the conditions, not only for the academic libraries, but also in many ways for the librarians. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how Swedish librarians experience their pedagogic role and task in the context of an academic library. The following four questions in this investigation were asked: How do the librarians experience the formal task that they have? How do the librarians experience the physical library environment? How do the librarians experience the co-operation with others involved in their work? How do the librarians experience their own pedagogic knowledge and competence in their daily practice? The study showed that these librarians believed the physical environment to be very important and is seen as a pedagogical tool in their daily work.

This thesis is a case study which describes the automation of a university library in Sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of the case study is, firstly; to find out which actors and factors have started and influenced the automation and the implementation of ICT at Makerere University Library in Kampala, Uganda. Secondly; it also discusses if the automation has changed the librarys condition. The empirical material consists of fifteen interviews with librarians and students. The empirical material itself has functioned as a base when discerning the analytical themes.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to, through user studies, analyse whether Carol C. Kuhlthaus information search model is applicable in a Swedish school. Furthermore, the guidance that the students may receive from the teacher and/or school librarian is analysed. Answers are sought to the following questions: · How do the students perceive their information seeking? · How do the librarian and/or teacher support the students during their information seeking process? The study is based on a qualitative method of approach, through interviews with four informants: a librarian, a teacher and two pupils.

This study is an attempt to shed light on problems and possibilities of the school library of the Swedish comprehensive school concerning library law and goals of the school and the school library. Many investigations about the role of the school library of the comprehensive school have been carried through. They have all more or less come to the same conclusions. In spite of Swedish library law and goal documents of the school library, the school libraries are often neglected, if not will and commitment are to be found among teachers. Using a model of the school organisation by Gunnar Berg, three cases of school libraries are presented and analysed in a larger organisational and political perspective.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the importance of public libraries for individuals in their everyday life and to study the differences in views between the individuals. Questions posed in this study are: What do public libraries mean to individuals? Which differences between individuals views of the public library are to be found? What is the reason for differences to occur? The analysis is based upon qualitative interviews with six persons, four women and two men between 31 and 55 years of age. The theoretical starting points are Anderson and Skot-Hansens theory of four different roles of public libraries and Bourdieus theory of lifestyle. The study acts on a hermeneutic attitude.

With this master thesis we wanted to find out in which way the concept of public service is connected to different perspectives, ideals, visions of the future and forms of organizations. The purpose with our thesis was to do an analysis of different concepts regarding to public service. To the analysis of concepts we used Swedish newspapers and analysed the issue of public service that had been discussed in articles written during the last five years. From this material and other papers about public service we developed a model of public service ideals. We wanted to find out what the different perspectives thought about the Swedish television and their commission.

The purpose with this thesis is to examine how four novels with a trait of confession written between 1996 and 2001 have been received in the Swedish daily press. This is done from a feministic perspective. The study is based on 36 reviews and the method which is used consists of a close-reading of the reviews, where the following questions are asked to the texts: Are there examples of reception in sexual analogies?; Are the novels ascribed a status of universality or are they considered to be something private?; How does the reviewers comment the exposure of the authors themselves and persons close to them?; What does the positive versus negative criticism concentrate on?; How does the reviewers comment the sexual element in the novels? The theoretical framework focuses on how womens literature has been treated in literary criticism and the treatment of the confession novels in the 1970s. The analysis of the reviews has, among many other things, showed that the novels mostly are regarded as something private; that the reviewers for different reasons question the publishing of the novels and that there are things concerning women and sexuality that is not accepted to write about.

The principal aim of this thesis is to test if extracts, produced by the automatic summarizer "Copernic Summarizer", are possible to use as abstracts. The aim is also to give a picture of what automatic summarization is and why it is motivated. Three questions are asked: What is automatic summarization and what can it be used for? Is it possible to replace the author-written abstracts with extracts from "Copernic Summarizer"? Is automatic summarization motivated for the different areas of use that are identified in the first question? An automatic summarizer is a program that is intended to summarize text automatically and it can be used for different purposes, for example for summarizing WebPages or scientific articles. To answer the second question an experiment is carried out.

The aim of this study has been to investigate the views concerning the sharing of music files over the Internet as expressed by some of the parties engaged in the current debate in Sweden concerning these issues. The purpose of this study has also been to scrutinize the views about music filesharing as expressed by the parties in question, as well as the conclusions possible to extrapolate from these opinions. The method used to gather information from the parties subjected to this study has been by conducting and recording interviews with representatives from the organizations and companies entities in question. Those entities are: the Record Company Sony/BMG, The Swedish branch of the organization IFPI International Federation of the Phonographic Industry and the Swedish organization the Pirate Bureau. The method used to analyze the empirically gathered material has been inspired by a method common in the discipline of philosophy of education known as Phenomenography.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how semantic relations in a document collection can be visualized with a Kohonen self-organizing map. It can be seen as a map of the information space which can be used to support information retrieval. The study makes a comparison of the possible differences between a map that is based on morphologically unprocessed text and a map where the text has been lemmatized. The text that is being processed is the definitions of all the existing instances in WordNet of a random selection of indexing terms from the Times-collection. The purpose is to see if morphological processing somehow can show different semantic connections between term instances based on their definitions.