In 2010 there will be a political resolution to ensure that the Swedish society is accessible to all citizens including people with disabilities. For this purpose a national action plan for disability policy "From patient to citizen" (Govt. Bill 1999/2000:79) has been set out with the aim of ensuring that the disability perspective will permeate every sector of society and that the approach and response to people with disabilities will be improved. The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs is responsible for implementing the disability policy in the cultural sector.Since public libraries in Sweden are a part of the public cultural sector, they will also be affected by the political resolution regarding accessibility. The concept underpinning library services for disabled people must be that of equality of access.

The purpose of this bachelor's thesis is to see how public libraries have adopted the new e-book readers and how the libraries think the e-readers will affect them in the future. There are three different theories in this study which are used to see how the e-book reader influences the libraries as an innovation and as a remediation from the paper book as well as its evolution. The authors have used four qualitative interviews where they have tried to find the most relevant Librarians for the purpose. It was found that all the libraries in the study think that they need to learn about the e-reader and its functions to be able to understand users? needs, but they haven´t agreed if they should have the e-reader as a library loan.

The aim of this essay is to examine fan culture?s role in Swedish public libraries. I have interviewed, via email, six Librarians who encounter and use fan culture in their daily work. The theoretical elements of my essay are based on a modified set of theories by Dorte Skot-Hansen that identifies six ideal types of cultural political rationalities. My study reveals that fan culture is used in Swedish libraries as a tool in increasing user participation in library activities.

In this diploma work we present the results from a study of how adult immigrants utilise the services provided by the public library in Biskopsgården, Gothenburg. A survey encompassing 51 library visitors of foreign origin and an interview with two Librarians at the library were performed.The results from the survey show that the majority of the informants were male students inages from 26 to 45 years and that they had been living in Sweden for a maximum of five years. 73% of the informants used the library to borrow literature in Swedish, 53% to read newspapers and periodicals in their native language, 43% to borrow literature in their native language and 43% to read newspapers and periodicals in Swedish.These results were compared with two other related studies with which partial correspondencewas found. In addition, related topics such as multicultural Librarianship and the psychological aspects of immigration are discussed..

LIBRIS is a national library search engine offering information about 6 million books, articles, dissertations and other materials held by Swedish university libraries, research libraries and public libraries. In December 2007 a new version of LIBRIS was launched, developed with focus on usability, simplicity and accessibility. This thesis examines how the new LIBRIS is used, what is working well and what could be improved and also what the users think of LIBRIS. The following report is based partly on a study of usability and partly on a series of tests where Librarians, scientists, students and developers have executed a number of tasks while thinking aloud. The users also participated in an interview.

The general view of learning has dramatically changed during the last two decades. Today we talk about learning for life and educate to meet the demands of the information society. This new view forces us to constantly relearn and develop new knowledge ? something which has resulted in large restructuring within the upper secondary school. New forms of teaching, where the pupils are given the opportunity to a more active search for knowledge, is developing.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to study how libraries handle metadata in institutional repositories. The methodology of the study is semi-structured interviews with Librarians from all Swedish libraries that currently use the institutional repository system DSpace. Metadata schemes from the different libraries have also been studied. As analytical tools the study uses the user tasks presented in Functional Requirement for Bibliographic Records, as well as a study of metadata quality made by Jung-Ran Park. The study shows a rather big difference between the ways the libraries use institutional repositories.

The subject of this paper is the library job market in Sweden 1975-1995. Job advertisementsin the periodical of DIK Association (the Swedish federation for occupational groups thatworks with documentation, information and culture) have been studied.1975, 1980, 1985, 1990 and 1995 there were 2 170 advertisements of situations for Librarians.They have been examined with focus on the following:situation description:qualifications requested:? type of library? size of municipality?county? hours per week? duration? designation? tasks? education? knowledge of languages? knowledge of specific subjects? knowledge of computers? experience? driving licence, carStatistics have been made. The figures of the five years have been compared to give a pictureof the development.The results have also been compared with what has been written about the changes that arehappening on the labour market in general, and similarities and differences have been pointedat..

The essay is about the Nobel Library's investments in fiction, the change of certain linguisticareas since 1904 and the purchase policy of the Library. The paper contains an introductoryhistorical chapter, where I describe the history of the Swedish Academy, the life and willof Alfred Nobel and in conclusion a description of the Nobel library of the Swedish Academy.When writing this essay I have used a combined qualitative and quantitative method, meaningthat I have interviewed the Librarians of the Nobel Library, studied the purchase catalogues,and kept statistics over the books.in different linguistic areas purchased since 1904 onwardwith an emphasize on years ending with "4". The outcome of this survey is that the purchaseof books within the different speech areas doesn't vary as much as first expected, and thatthere rises and falls within all the linguistic areas which could be further explored..

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the reason behind thedecision to open libraries at subway stations in Stockholm.The theoretical framework for the study is Douglas Raber´s threeideologies, social activism, conservative response and populistinitiative. The study includes interviews with Librarians and apolitician responsible for the service and documents with plansfor the Public Libraries development during the period. Theempirical material was examined with an idea- and ideologicalanalysis.The conclusion is that the concept of the subway libraries consistsof a combination of the three ideologies but the most evidentare those of populist initiative and social activism.The reason for opening libraries at subway stations is to makethe libraries more easily accessible, to attract new visitors and tomake the Public Libraries service more visible. These smalllibraries have a function as a market place for the Public Librariesand as a meeting place in the city..

The purpose of this Bachelor?s thesis was to explore how principals and school administrators work to develop their school libraries. To narrow our area of study we chose to only include gymnasiums run by the municipality and conducted four semi-structured interviews with two principals and two heads of upper secondary school. We formulated two questions: (1) what perceptions of the school library and its functions can be found among our four respondents? And, (2) how do they work with developing the school library? As a theoretical framework we used Loertscher?s taxonomy of the school leader.

This bachelor´s thesis analyzes the debate in a number of Swedish media regarding the introduction of video games as a new medium in the public libraries. The theory and method used is discourse analysis. Three questions were asked: how the introduction of video games as a new media in libraries is discussed, how is it motivated and in what way the authors of the articles analyzed are speaking about new media and the mission of the library. The selected articles were divided into four themes and the analysis resulted in the identification of two main discourses, one which is positive to the introduction and integration of new media in the libraries? collections, and one which has a more negative approach and uses quality and culture as an argument. The conclusion is that video games are a medium so widely used that Librarians have to decide whether or not they want to include it in the libraries? collections, and by deciding this they reveal their attitude towards the mission and purpose of the public library..

The aim of this thesis is to study the effects of self-service on professional qualifications of library assistants in three public libraries in Sweden. The research questions are: - How do the library assistants experience that their professional qualifications have changed since self-service was introduced at the library? - Does the view on library assistants? professional qualifications and future differ between library managers and library assistants? - Does the view on library assistants? professional qualifications and future differ between the three different libraries? The method used is qualitative interviews with six library assistants and three head of libraries from three different public libraries. The theoretical framework for this study is constructed by theoretical ideas about professional qualifications and technology's impact on professionalism. The results indicate that the cognitive qualifications of library assistants have increased and social qualifications both increased and decreased.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how Librarians, information specialists and teachers discuss Wikipedia within national (Swedish) professional journals. Questions asked in the study are: How is Wikipedia perceived in the professional journals? What different positions do writers and commentators take in relation to Wikipedia? 133 articles from 31 different professional journals in the period from 2001 to the middle of 2010 were analysed. The theory and method used is Laclau?s and Mouffe?s discourse theory from which we created our own model with sex different steps.

In this diploma work we present the results from a study of how adult immigrants utilise the services provided by the public library in Biskopsgården, Gothenburg. A survey encompassing 51 library visitors of foreign origin and an interview with two Librarians at the library were performed.The results from the survey show that the majority of the informants were male students inages from 26 to 45 years and that they had been living in Sweden for a maximum of five years. 73% of the informants used the library to borrow literature in Swedish, 53% to read newspapers and periodicals in their native language, 43% to borrow literature in their native language and 43% to read newspapers and periodicals in Swedish.These results were compared with two other related studies with which partial correspondencewas found. In addition, related topics such as multicultural Librarianship and the psychological aspects of immigration are discussed..