This thesis deals with the question of why the Swedish Academy Dictionary has its own Library when, for almost a hundred years, it has been located at the University Library of Lund. Looking at the library functions: Librarian, users, room and books and their external factors: economy, internal actors, external actors and the development of the Swedish Academy Dictionary helped to shed light upon which relations between these factors have been important in the development of the library. The results show that there has not been a conscious plan behind the Library. A large number of the books in the Library was given by those who have worked at the Dictionary and also by their friends and collegues. Another part was given by the Swedish Academy and was partly gathered when the project was still in Stockholm.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate changes within four discourses identified in the curriculum material of the Swedish library education in Borås Bibliotekarielinjen dating from 1977 and 1985 and its successor Library and Information Science Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap dating from 1995, 1999. My method used is a text analytic method primarily derived from the discourse theory of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, yet with addition of tools from the critical discourse analysis of Fairclough. By identifying three floating signifiers within the material, i.e information, library, and Librarian, and thereafter identifying their fixation, a pattern of resemblance and diversity in the fixating signs appeared between different courses of the curriculum dating from 1999. Hence I could establish an order of discourse consisting of four library discourses, a knowledge organisation discourse, a user discourse, a society discourse and a management discourse. Using this discursive order as a pattern, I could trace these four discourses back in time within the material dating from 1995, 1985 and 1977.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how high school students (age 13 to 19) search for information on the web and in databases. Furthermore, it aims to look into how critical of sources they are. The questions asked was: how the students search for information in digital media? Which kind of sources do the students use? How they evaluate the information they find? Do they get any education in information retrieval and source evaluation? To answer these questions students were interviewed in groups about their information retrieval behavior. Furthermore two school Librarians were interviewed about their experience of the students? information retrieval.During the interviews it was clear that the students had received quite sparse instructions on the subjects of information retrieval and criticism of the sources.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine readers? advice in weblogs - frequently modified web pages with a series of archived entries. We have chosen to study a specific kind of entry that contains information about a book of fiction- not for children and young adults - and the bloggers? comments regarding that same book. The entries are published in ten weblogs that all deal with literature and reading.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine similarities and differences in qualitative experiences between formal and informal reading groups from the participants? point of view. The empirical data was acquired from interviews with nine reading group participants, of whom four of them participated in formal reading groups and five in informal reading groups. To analyze the empirical data, Louise M. Rosenblatt?s theory concerning reading and a method concerning reading groups by Immi Lundin were used.

The aim of this study is to examine a number of Swedish working public Librarians and compare them with some popular standard images of Librarians. In this project we have been working in line with these three questions: How do the Librarians describe themselves and how can the descriptions be interpreted? What images are the most common and repetitive, according to earlier research? What differences and similarities are there between the images of the Librarians and the working Librarians? To answer the questions we have performed seven qualitative interviews with working Librarians and collected relevant literature that presents various portrayals of Librarians. To interpret the interviews we have used Pierre Bourdieus theories of social space, social fields, habitus and the cultural, academic, social and the economic capitals, as well as the connection between individual taste, class and social power. The conclusions of the collected material of earlier research and the interpreted material from the interviews have been compared and discussed.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how different kinds of information seekers are evaluating information quality in the information flow online. To address the problem stated, qualitative interviews were carried out with a Librarian as a reference person and a group consisting of journalists and scientists. The result of the study implies that the reference person is well aware of the strategies employed by her in the search process. However, the respondents are not aware of the strategies they are actually using. An explanation is the respondents lack of education in information seeking.

This thesis addresses the library environment and how it affects the accessibility for the library users. A study is made of the public library in Eslöv. We wanted to find out how the library staff, the senior Librarian and the architect discuss the library environment, considering:? The accessibility for the library users.? The possibility for the users to orientate themselves in the library.We also wanted to see how we as users experience the library environment and compare these experiences with the results from the interviews. The material used consists of qualitative interviews, observations of users and our own experience studies.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to describe and analyse the origin and development of the libraries in the town of Värnamo, between the years 1908 and 1960, when a new modern public library was inaugurated. The method I have used is, to a great extent, examining and analysing source material from the archive of the municipality in Värnamo and the popular movement in Jönköping. As a background to my study I describe the development of the Swedish society, from the end of the nineteenth-, until the middle of the twentieth century. I also describe the local development of Värnamo, during the same period. Furthermore I also give a general description of the progress of the libraries in Sweden during the same time.

Syftet med examensarbetet är främst att undersöka hur genus framställs i barnlitteratur samt fokusera på bibliotekariens roll i samband med utlåning av barnböcker till förskolan och vårdnadshavare. Som förskollärare ser vi boken som ett pedagogiskt redskap och som ett stöd i ett genusarbete. Vi har erfarenheter av att boken har ett stort användningsområde och de flesta böcker lånas via biblioteket. Därför ser vi att bibliotekarien har en viktig roll för förskolan i deras bokutbud. LpFö98 tar upp genusarbetet som en del av verksamheten, vi anser att det är vår skyldighet att ha kunskap om genus och dess betydelse för kommande generationer.

This master thesis deals with events, dynamics and problems of mediated information seeking within the context of a new information service called "Book a Librarian". The study, based on a survey and interviews both in academic and public libraries and participant observations in academic libraries, has its theoretical base in the cognitive theory of information retrieval interaction. The cognitive view is used to throw light upon the need of an ongoing dialogue during the session in order to detect the information needs of the user and to conduct a successful retrieval of information. The communicative interaction is seen as threepart interaction between the intermediary, the user and the information system, where the current cognitive states of all three participants are involved. The study shows that the cognitive obstacles for a successful mediation and information retrieval are mostly connected to participants current knowledge of the subject and of the retrieval techniques.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how the images of Librarians are conceived and held by the public. It has often been claimed that Librarians are subject to widely spread negative stereotyping. My purpose is to study the nature and origin of these stereotypes. Since popular media is one source of these stereotypes and images I have chosen to look into how Librarians are characterized in 20 Swedish novels written between 1982-2002. The questions this thesis aims to answer are: What images of Librarians occur in the novels? How are the tasks of the Librarians respectively described in the novels? How are female and male Librarians respectively described? The analysis of the novels is then compared with interviews with three professional Librarians about their view of their professional role and their perceptions of its status and image.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to identify discourses within the school library field and to analyse which professional identities the discourses result in for school Librarians. The empirical data consist of 71 articles from Swedish journals concerning school libraries and school Librarians, between the years 2000-2003. The theory and method used is a discourse analysis which is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. This form of discourse analysis was chosen since it was useful when identity was the focus of study. The analysis is accomplished in three steps.

This study examines the closure of public libraries, and the nonprofit organizations takeover of them as a phenomenon. The aim is to understand why the nonprofit takeover is common and what the takeover symbolizes and if the discourse in media invokes the views on libraries and the profession.Interviews were made with Librarians, politicians and representatives of a nonprofit organization to study different sides of the phenomenon. Other empirical data were found in local and national newspapers and media-channels. I discovered that public libraries are highly valued by both politicians and the community. The study also showed that a library in a community makes people feel valued.

The point of departure for this thesis was an article written by Christer Hermansson (2008). He thinks that Librarians, following the development of Library 2.0 and the change of public libraries, have strayed away from what he believes should be the focus of the library: Literature. The aim of this thesis is to study how Librarians in six Swedish libraries perceive their occupational roles. How does the increased user control, which is seen as part of Library 2.0, affect the tasks of libraries and Librarians? The material used in this study was acquired using a qualitative interview technique in which six Librarians working in public libraries with experience of IT, mediation and purchase of literature partook.