The aim of this Masters thesis is to explore the image of the librarian from three groups: librarians, researchers and directors of staff from industrial companies. The purpose was also to study the image of the future librarian as the Swedish School of Library and Information Science at the University College of Borås introduces it. As my theoretical framework I used communication theories and marketing theories. I searched answers to the following questions: - Is there any resemblance at all between the common stereotypes of the librarian and the images given by the participants of the survey? - How do the librarians view themselves? - What is the image of the librarian among the researchers who use the services of the library? - What is the image of the librarian among the directors of staff from the industrial companies? - What is the image of the librarian given by an educational institution during the basic education? I contacted the participants and asked them to draw a picture of a librarian and write a short text about the picture.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the user discourses that can be identified in the public library field. Questions posed in this study are: what discourses can be found, what characterises them, how are users categorised and what does this categorisation imply. The theoretical starting-point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. The method is text analytic. 62 articles from three library journals - Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle and Ikoner are analysed through a model in four phases.

Today it is common to state that we are living in an information overloaded society. But there are many different definitions of what can be said to constitute Information Overload and there is a lack of substantial research on the subject. Conclusions in the available literature on Information Overload are often drawn on anecdotal evidence and carries a dramatized picture of the causes and effects of the phenomenon.With the tools of discursive analysis this two years master?s thesis explores how the phenomenon Information Overload is portrayed in six popular science books that deals with the subject: Alvin Toffler (1970) Future Shock, Orrin Klapp (1986) Overload and Boredom, Richard Wurman (1989) Information Anixety, Andrew Keen (2007) The cult of the amateur, Maggie Jackson (2008), Distracted and Nicholas Carr (2010) The Shallows. The result of the analysis shows that there is a common discourse of how the subject of Information Overload is represented, which stretches in and between the books intertextually.

Studies of networks, fields and of communicative circulations complement each other. This master thesis is a biographical study of an author and journalist, Gustaf Montgomery GM, his network in Sweden of the early 19th century, and a study of his authorship and literary career. The starting-point of the study is GM:s change of field from the conservative to the liberal in 1832. The aim is to give explanations to this change and to describe how the change in turn effected the network. The method used is critical of sources.

This Masters thesis is a study in library and information science, that examines literature as a tool for young people in their identity creation. Both scientists and teachers have found that teenagers like to identify themselves, when reading literature. The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how youths construct their identity through reading in relation to the purpose that libraries and cultural politics have in youth novels. The starting point of this study is the sociologist Thomas Ziehe and his idea about identity try-out identitetsutprovning and Erving Goffmans dramaturgy perspective. The main question is: what is the relation between young peoples identity creation in youth novels and in their reality in proportion to the young peoples reading of youth literature and the science about their reading? The question is answered in three parts.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine what political, social and ideological reasons that were the base for the establishment of the Swedish temperance movement. Which judgements within this movement that resulted in the decision to establish publishing firms, how these publishing businesses were organised and what function they had in the literary circuit. The questions are: What principal political, social, economical and ideological reasons were the bases for the establishment of the Swedish temperance movement? How has their need for publishing firms arisen? Which were the publishing firms and who were the publishers? What ideas, purposes, experiences, values and judgements led to the establishment of publishing firms? In the first part of the theory I have used the historical materialism of Karl Marx; in the second part the theory of middle class publicity by Jürgen Habermas; and in the third part I have made a presentation of the literary circuit and how it works according to Marx and Habermas. The method used is an analysis of ideas and ideologies in literature and documents.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine and analyse how the public librarys mission is interpreted and formulated in a selection of library related journals. The journals are both international scientific referee journals from the LIS field and journals with a closer connection to the practitioners within the public library field. The idea is that these journals can be seen as windows to an academic theoretic perspective on public libraries, as well as to the practitioners way of talking about the librarys mission. The study also aims to examine if there is a difference in the way that the librarys mission is interpreted and discussed among theorists and among practitioners within the field. The theoretical starting-point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory, and the method is text analytic.

This master thesis investigates attitudes toward electronic publishing of fiction among the key participants authors and publishers in Sweden with the overall purpose of analysing the nature of these attitudes and what sort of tensions that exist between the two groups. The major areas of concern were formulated as: what sort of attitudes do authors and publishers display toward electronic publishing of fiction?, how do these attitudes affect the way the two groups relate to electronic publishing and to each other? and how do they perceive the future of this practice?. Everett Rogers diffusion of innovations theory was applied to characterise electronic publishing as an innovation cluster, and to investigate innovation attributes in form of relative advantages and disadvantages, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability. Data was gathered using quantitative questionnaires, but respondents were also given the opportunity to elaborate freely on some of the questions.

The purpose of the essay has been to examine representations of immigrants in contemporary library and information science research in a Scandinavian context. By analyzing nine articles from the past decade we examine the perceptions that exist in the concepts of multiculturalism, culture, race, ethnicity, religion, gender and whiteness and what role and importance the library as a place is assigned in relation to immigrants as a user group. Our study consists of a qualitative text analysis, a critical oriented close reading method based on critical race and whiteness studies and intersectional theory. We have, with the help of Sara Ahmed´s theories of hegemonic whiteness, demonstrated how multiculturalism is partly presented as something desirable and good, partly as something potentially threatening.The discourse of multiculturalism can be said to express the notions of the other, which in the source material manifests itself by ascribing otherness to immigrants. We have, for example, examined how ethnical and cultural differences are highlighted by a separation of East and West, the library?s educational and assisting role in relation to immigrants as a user group as well as representations of whiteness, gender and clothes.

In this essay I have been writing about the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. It was written at the Library School in Borås as a contribution to the struggle of the maintenance of the free word. In the essay I have been concentrating on how Reich was received in Sweden from the publication of his first book 1927 to the year of 2000. The work started with a biographical chapter and a chapter about Reich's scientific development, which was divided into three phases: one psychoanalytical and Marxist, one physiological and biological and a third phase that makes a synthesis of these in a cosmological form. The analytic material has been books and articles from periodicals and papers.

Based on a review of literature on evalution of public activities and in purpose to introduce amore general framework, this study describes a picture of the concept, context, motives,strategies, use and actors in Evaluation as these are experienced outside the field of libraryand information. The background is the increased need for" evaluations in public libaries and aneed for new LIS knowledge about it. The reviewed literature has its origin in differentdisciplinary contexts and the study include contributions from policy studies, sociologi,education research, business administration, philosophy and anthropology. The focus, though,is not placed upon differences in the literature but on similarities.The review is organised in six parts. In the first part a presentation is given of how evaluationsare conceptualized and its meaning in a historical perspective.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the combination of bibliographic coupling and three hierarchical cluster analytic techniques: average, complete and single linkage. Bibliographic coupling is applied as a measure of similarity between recently published articles and the cluster techniques are used for the partition of a set of articles into subsets of articles with similar research focus. The field of information science is applied as the test arena and the selection of data, i.e., the article population to be partitioned, is based on a number of central journals. Methods of evaluation include both quantitative approaches as well as a qualitative one. For comparing the resulting partitions, adjusted Rand index is utilized and for the establishment of cluster coherence and isolation, measures of average normalized coupling strength is applied.

This masters thesis examines the reading environment during "booktalk", with special reference to a reading project in compulsory comprehensive and upper secondary schools in Stockholm. The main question is: What does the reading environment look like during booktalk? Three questions are asked: Which factors affect the reading environment? Which are the conditions concerning book selection and book availability? How do the librarians perform as enabling adults? Different groups of pupils, together with their teachers and the librarian, are studied during booktalks in five schools. The study uses a qualitative approach, which takes the form of open observations during 15 booktalks and one interview with the two librarians involved in the project and studies of literature. The theoretical framework is Aidan Chambers theory relating to reading environment and its effects upon the reading process.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to examine how librarians work in a literary educational role with literary circles for adults and youth, in public libraries and at school. The study also examines whether participation in book discussion groups has any effect on participants and librarians regarding changes in reading habits and in personal development. Another aspect investigated was how participants experienced the atmosphere in the group. We have conducted qualitative interviews with five librarians who have lead different literary circles and with two participants from each literary circle. In all 13 interviews were conducted.

The main purpose of this two year master´s thesis is to study patterns, structures and relations within gender studies when combined with Library and Information Science(LIS). Further aims are to determine the character of student work considering, occurrence, gender and main theme, to study the progress of the intellectual base of gender studies within LIS and to evaluate the use of bibliometrics as a tool for researching the development of a discipline. To achieve these aims, a bibliometric study using both publication analysis and citation analysis, is carried out. The studied material contains student work, specifically focused on gender, from the Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS) from 1985?2012.