The aim of this thesis is to study how librarians in Swedish libraries perceive the task of mediating fiction. What are the librarians private relationships to fiction and how do they perceive the position of fiction in contemporary society? What views have they developed of the borrowers approach to fiction and how do they perceive the borrowers increasing influence in the library? How do librarians prioritise and which principles form the basis for their purchase of fiction? How do they categorise fiction in the library and how much do economic and political factors influence the decision making process for the purchase of fiction? Finally, how do they define their roles as mediators of fiction and which strategies do they adopt to communicate which literature the library has to offer? The material used in this study was acquired using a qualitative interview technique in which six librarians with experience of literature mediation partook..

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of transferring information from science to "the field" of environmental protection in Sweden. I have studied four Swedish environmental organizations, Greenpeace Nordic, WWF Sweden, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and Friends of the Earth Sweden to see how they search/get information. I have also studied the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and its role as sender of information, since it is the authority which is responsible for environmental information in Sweden. I have used information and communication theories as a help to analyse my results. While working on this paper I realized that my methods were not the best.

This masters thesis is a study of how the expression quality literature is used in widespread newspapers and magazines. Wittgensteins idea of language games is used as a theoretical starting point. The analysis of 37 articles draws a picture of five language games that are called; the taking over, the polarising, the example giving, the gender critical and the ironic language game. The expression that quality literature is most often put in relation to is popular literature. The line between the two is sometimes distinctly drawn in the articles and sometimes quite vague.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate if gender stereotypes are mediated to children between 0-3 years through books suitable for their age. This thesis concerns books that are available in public libraries. The content will be analysed by using a combination of methods, both content analysis of all the books in our study and a qualitative analysis of a smaller number of these books. With inspiration from both Robert Connell and Yvonne Hirdman and their theories of gender and gender stereotypes, this material was read and we wanted to examine if books for very young children might establish stereotypes. Our analysis showed that many known stereotypes are common in these books.

The aim of this masters thesis is to explore a mediators practical procedure during booktalks. The main question is: Why do librarians have booktalks and what does it mean to have booktalks for children? In order to answer our main question, we have used these three questions: - Why do our interviewed librarians have booktalks? - How do our informants prepare their booktalks and what do their presentations look like? - Do our informants have any follow-ups of their booktalks and if so, how do they do that? To limit the thesis, we have concentrated our study to Swedish public libraries and to children in the elementary school. We have conducted qualitative interviews with three librarians who do booktalks for children as a part of their job. The thesis theoretical basis is Aidan Chambers theory about the Reading Circle and especially the parts enabling adult and selection.

The aim of this master thesis has been to investigate discussions about public access to Internet in public libraries. Areas of interest were the debate in Sweden as well as in the United States. The approach was qualitative and questionnaires were distributed by e-mail to a number of Swedish public libraries. The results from the survey were then supplemented with a theoretical background and a literature study. The usable questionnaires obtained from 20 libraries showed a rather uniform approach among the Swedish librarians of how the Internet is best provided by public libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how the internal information processing and management is carried out within a unit of Viskafors municipality. Furthermore, to explore and make recommendations of how the organisation can improve its internal information management. To get a full picture I have interviewed people at different levels of the organisation. The main findings showed that there was a dysfunction in the internal information processing and management. For example the study showed that the internal information did not reach out to the different parts of the organisation due to insufficient information processing.

In this paper I present a website on the Internet. The EuropeanLinkTreasury ELT is a resource to Swedish children between 10 and 15 years of age. I am looking at this resource from a gender point of view. I want to see if ELT has thought of this perspective. Are there as many websites for girls as there are for boys? I want to see if the text is separated between gender.

This thesis examines the ideological implications of an emerging shift in human rights-issues regarding information. As Intellectual Property becomes increasingly important to the economy of developed nations previously commonly owned or unprotected information runs a real risk of becoming privatized. The World Trade Organization and its binding agreements GATS and TRIPS are subjected to a critical ideology-analysis, with special efforts to elucidate possible effects on the public service realm and its commitment as provider of free information as a human right. The result suggests that not only does a threat to information as such a right exist, but that its ideological basis however seemingly rooted in a liberal/neoliberal context actually in its express views on information deviates from liberal/neoliberal theory in many ways, and that there are theoretical inconsistencies in that same ideology..

Intranets has been marketing as the tool for solving the organisations information problems. My interest is to see how an intranet works in an organisation. This study was an investigation about the use of EkaForum, the intranet of Eka Chemicals, at the Rollsbo division. The study aimed to evaluate how EkaForum is being used, firstly as a transmitter of information and secondly as a communication tool for the organisation. The study was constructed as a quantity survey based on a questionnaire with 24 questions and was sent out to the staff of Rollsbo division.

This masters thesis concerns the professional knowledge of the librarian. It is a comparative study where two major ma-gazines in library press, Biblioteksbladet and DIK-forum, is compared between the years 1990-2000, in relation to the theories of professionalization and the associations to the union. The study focus on showing the differences and similarities between the two magazines according to how they interact from the subjects education, wages and status. The study is conducted from two questions: - Which are the central differences and similarities in the description of the librarian profession in the two magazines, from the perspectives of wage, status and education? - In what way do the two magazines reflect the theories of professionalization? To give a wider perspective of the librarian profession, there is also a historical chapter with an explanation to the making of the librarian profession..

This master thesis concerns the relationship the librarianhas to the libraries classification system. The system itselfis made by librarians for librarians and is only used bylibrarians. This raises the question of how the librariansrelate to their own system to create order. The empiricalmaterial consists of five in-depth interviews with librarians.Two theoretical approaches were used in the analysis of thematerial with one focus on the librarian?s professional rolland the other on the postmodern theories about humansneed for order.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the performance of queries that is expanded before translation in comparison with only translation of the queries using a bilingual dictionary, and also to see if the number of terms that was used to expand the queries was of any importance i. e. if many terms from a thesaurus helped or destroyed a query. To answer these questions i used two online thesauri, Rogets thesaurus and Merriam-Webster Online and one printed bilingual dictionary, Norstedts English-Swedish dictionary. Even though the number of examined queries is too small to draw any definite conclusions, the results suggest that expanding using a general thesaurus may have a negative effect on the queries.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how students who study with Problem-based learning PBL in a distance learning course perceive the support from the university library. I first went into adult education, PBL and distance studies, one at a time, and then took a look at the combination of problem-based learning in distance studies. During the investigation, I conducted five interviews using a phenomenographic method to understand how the students perceived the support they received from the university library. The university library gives a lot of support but what I noticed while I was writing was that it is difficult to reach the students with the information regarding the help that is available to them. I give some example on how to develop the support and find that the students have a wide range of different needs for support from the library depending on their individual situation, social context, academic ability, location and course of study.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to study students perception of the services that the library staff provides and the library staffs opinion of the students perceptions. With the concept service we mean the treatment, the attitudes and the qualities that exist between the library staff and their users. Our purpose is also to examine how the users experienced services quality. Our survey was conducted at an academic library with questionnaires to both students and library staff. We analysed the result of the survey by using three theories by Lundmark, Keen and Grönroos and Monthelie.