The bachelor thesis examines conceptions behind the Swedish public Librarian?s opinions of the public library as a meeting place. The study uses the critical discourse analysis, developed by Ernest Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, to analyze a focus group interview. The discourse analysis identifies four themes in the empirical material: the imagined arena of the meeting place, the behaviour in the meeting place, the meeting place?s Librarian and the polemic against the meeting place.

The study is based on three Swedish novels published in 1945,1956 and 1964, and three Swedish novels published in 1998, 2008and 2009. The aim has been to investigate how Librarians are portrayed in Swedish literature, as well as a comparison between the older and the newer literature. What Librarian images are portrayed in the analyzed literature? Is the portrayal mostly positive, negative or neutral? Are there any clear differences in how Librarians portrayed in newer and older Swedish fiction? If so, what are they? The method used has been qualitative content analysis where relevant paragraphs have been coded and divided them into categories of appearance, personality, and professional identity. The conclusion is that the Librarian is often portrayed as an intellectual and somewhat high-strung bibliophile.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how some Librarians working at a public library experience problems that can occur at the reference interview, slightly focusing on communication difficulties. Therefore I interviewed three Librarians working at the reference desk on a daily basis. I chose to limit the study to public libraries and to the south of Sweden. My main question is: what difficulties can a Librarian encounter during a reference interview and what can he/she do to treat these? In support of my main question I have three subordinated questions:What reasons can there be to a Librarian not understanding a user?s information need?What methods are useful for a Librarian to enhance the condition of the reference interview? What attitudes and qualities can be of use for the Librarian at a difficult reference interview?For the collection of empirical data I chose to use semi-structured interviews.

The topic of this bachelor thesis is the art of book talk. Book talk is when a Librarian orally presents a book in front of a group of people, in this thesis, a group of children. The first part of the thesis treats book talk as a method and its development. It will also go through which role book talk plays in the daily work of a children's Librarian today, and if they got any education in book talk during their Librarian education. The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare Lev Vygotskij's pedagogical theories on fantasy and creativity to book talk performed by children's Librarians.

The aim of this thesis is to study through discourse analysis how users talk about Librarians and the Librarian profession and what perceptions they have regarding it. I have tried to do this by asking the questions: How do the users describe Librarians and the Librarian profession? Are there any patterns in what they say? The method and theory I have used is Laclau and Mouffes? discourse theory and partially structured interviews. The material consists of interviews with eight users that are both women and men, both students and members of the public and they were between 25 and 50 years old. In the material I found two discourses: the discourse about Librarians and the discourse about the Librarian profession.

The research of this Bachelor?s thesis examines classifieds for Librarians, and makes use of Ørom?s theory of sixLibrarian identities plus Schreiber?s complementary seventh identity. The main focus of the thesis was to examine what qualities and skills are presented and what identities are manifested in the classifieds. A third issue was to explore how relevant Ørom?s theory is to examine and understand the profession today.The data was analysed by the use of content analysisand a hermeneutics approach was taken.

This master´s thesis is a comparative study of the importance of eight factors suggested in the literature to be related to the perceived utility of the service Book a Librarian (Swe. Boka en bibliotekarie). Disciplinary differences were also analysed. 73 encounters between students and Librarians in 11 Swedish academic libraries were studied using a survey. Six factors were significantly related (at the .05 level) to the utility of the service.

This thesis investigates the situation for comics in Swedish public libraries. The main questions is separated into two groups, the first dealing with the physical situation were we investigate placement, cataloguing and shelf arrangement. The second deals with the Librarians attitudes towards comics and how they may affect their work. The base for this thesis is the idea that the comic medium may sometimes be treated different than the rest of the libraries collections. Because of this, a theoretical basis is developed which focus on different views on comics.

The aim of this study is to gain an understanding of how dyslexic adults experience the library, their meeting with a Librarian and how they feel they are being helped with finding literature. To answer the purpose of the study I have conducted six semi-structured interviews with dyslexic adults.. Two theoretical models were used as an analytical tool in this study. One was Michael Buckland's aspects of access to information. The other is four aspects that explains the significance of personal encounter at the library.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to understand public library users' perceptions of Librarians' attitudes to users and professional knowledge. The purpose was also to investigate the relative importance to the user of pleasant or a knowledgeable Librarian. As a theoretical framework we use theory from business economy where the experience of the user is in focus. Answers were sought to the following questions: How do users perceive Librarians attitudes to users? How do users perceive Librarians professional knowledge? How do users want to be treated by public Librarians? What kind of knowledge should public Librarians have, according to users? We interviewed twelve students in university education that are users of public libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine why graduates in Librarian- and information science are employed by private companies. An initial explanation could be the influence of information technology and its impact on the Librarian. A second factor relates to how employers regard the Librarian outside the confines of the traditional labour market. The study is primarily based upon qualitative interviews with representatives of Swedish companies who have employed Librarians since 1993, the year that the education achieved third level academic recognition. Theoretically we relied upon Manuel Castells discussion on the rise of the information society and its influence on companies and the labour market.

Library 2.0 is a term which emerged a few years ago and is frequently discussed. There is no uniform definition of the term but the central aspect of the concept is to encourage increased participation from library users.The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate if and if so, how the professional role of the Librarian is affected by Library 2.0. To do that, we have conducted a case study at the public library in Umeå. Their homepage minabibliotek.se is a practical example of Library 2.0. The homepage is based on interactivity and the library users can participate in various ways.We thougt that qualitive interviews was the best way to gain an understanding for how the Librarians at the public library in Umeå experience how the work with minabibliotek.se affect their professional role.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine how much parents interfere with their children's choice of literature and if they have an inf1uence on what their children read. lt also includes the children's point of view as weil as the Librarian's.Twenty-one children answered a questionnaire, fourteen parents and one Librarian were interviewed. An attempt was made to divide their answers into several sections and to compare the results with extensive source material.The result shows that the parents in our study, from a general point of view, are interested in what their children read, but they do not influence them into certain types of literature by purpose..

This master thesis concerns the subject of a reference service named Book-a-Librarian. The service makes it possible for the library-user to indulge in a subject with the help of a Librarian after having made an appointment in advance. The main purpose of this thesis is to study the function of it. The methods used are a mix of literature and empirical studies to be able to comprehend and explain the practical nature of the service as well as placing the service in a theoretical framework. The empirical study is performed by a questionnaire, where Librarians working with the service are asked to participate.

The aim of this master thesis is to study how academic Librarians can overcome the gap between themselves and the user. The gap, as we see it, is generated by the user's deeper knowledge surrounding her subject in comparison to the Librarian. This knowledge gives the user possibilities to handle certain discourses attached to the subject and a knowledge how sub-subjects relate to each other within the main subject. At the same time the user is in need of help to find information within her subject, this need needs to be explained to the Librarian as a search expert. The scope of this master thesis is to find how the Librarian, tactically, can reach the users need despite lack of subject knowledge.