This Master?s thesis investigates user education at high school libraries. The aim of this study is to examine user education and the educational approach that librarian?s experience in their teaching. The method used for the study is qualitative interviews with seven high school Librarians.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the Swedish daily press portraits Librarians and the profession. I have used a discourse analytic study in my purpose to examine the image of Librarians and the profession. I have analysed 34 articles between January 1, 2009 until January 1, 2010 from Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter, which are the two daily newspapers with the largest circulation in Sweden. I have used three major questions to answer the aim of my study: In what context do Librarians and the profession appear in the daily press?What qualities are Librarians assigned in the daily press?What views and attitudes about Librarians and the profession appear in the articles?My analysis resulted in three discourses; discourse about Librarians? relation to literature, discourse about Librarians and the labour market and discourse about Librarians and information.

Open access to scientific literature on Internet is a concept which is supposed to change Librarians' work. The aim of the thesis was to examine Librarians' perception of Open access. A questionnaire survey was conducted among Librarians at libraries with specialisation in technique, natural sciences, medicine and pharmacy in Sweden. Even though Open access can be regarded as an alarming for Librarians' work, the results of the survey showed that the future of the Librarians' profession can be positive if they flexibly adopt their work routines according to changes in publication forms and library users' needs..

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate how public library users consider the knowledge of the Librarians and to examine what the users expect from the Librarians. To begin with, we contemplate our own view of the Librarians, their knowledge and what help we expect at the library. Realising that we do not expect particularly much from Librarians, although we have studied to become Librarians for two years, we assume that the regular library user does not expect much either. This assumption resulted in our decision to investigate this particular question.

The aim of this thesis is to study Librarians attitudes towards fiction and reading. I have examined Librarians fiction reading habits and how they handle the expectations that users may have regarding their knowledge in fiction literature. There have been many studies concerning the Librarians information literacy. This work explores Librarians competence in fiction literature. The primary question posted in this thesis is: What kind of fiction are Librarians reading and how do they feel that they can correspond to the users expectations? The data collection is based on literature on the subject and qualitative interviews with eight Librarians from different kinds of libraries.

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 Masters thesis is to study how Librarians experience reference work. We wanted to get a better understanding about Librarians assignments through the study. We chose to limit the study to public libraries, and to the south of Sweden. The questions used in our study are: How do Librarians interpret the conception of reference work? What values do Librarians have concerning reference work? How do Librarians experience reference work? How do Librarians look at different roles in reference work? We chose to use a fenomenographically inspired method.

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 aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate different ways of illustrating the information literacy of Librarians and with a pragmatic view survey what has been written about marketing the Librarians. The thesis is based on a marketing theory introduced by Philip Kotler. He believes that marketing is a social process and that everything can be marketed. I have reviewed three marketing strategies and their significance in marketing the information literacy of Librarians.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate the importance of subject expertise for academic Librarians in Skåne. Virtually all Librarians in Sweden have studied other subjects besides library and information science (LIS) before becoming Librarians, and in this thesis we ask what happens to this expertise. How many Librarians can be said to have a good background in the subjects they are working with? Do academic Librarians use their subject knowledge on the job? Does it make a difference what subject one has studied when it comes to job opportunities? What do Librarians themselves think of the importance of subject expertise? We are also interested in finding out how subject expertise fits in with the growing professionalization of Librarianship.A quantitative questionnaire was sent to 195 academic Librarians at four different institutes of higher education in Skåne. A total of 107 Librarians answered questions about their LIS education, subject background and current job as well questions on how important they perceived a subject background to be for themselves and for academic Librarians in general.

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 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 Bachelor?s thesis is to find out what Librarians think about the public libraries? collections. How do they want to develop their collection and what do they want the collection to offer society?Sanna Talja has developed a theory about different attitudes regarding collection development. These are named ?the general education repertoire?, ?the alternative repertoire? and ?the demand repertoire?.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how public Librarians, including school Librarians, express themselves about Librarians in library journals. Questions asked in the study are: How is the knowledge, tasks and roles of Librarians described? How do the Librarians describe their own and others perceptions of Librarians? Are there any contradictions in how the librarian profession is described and if so, what are they? 56 articles from three Swedish library journals, Biblioteksbladet, bis and DIK-forum in the period from 1990 to 2007, are analysed. The theory and method used is discourse analysis.

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.