The aim of this Master thesis is to examine the institutionalization of Library- and Information Science in Sweden. I focus on the period 1978-1991, and pay special attention to the development of the discipline at the University College of Borås. My main method of investigation has been analysis of printed sources. After a brief description of the discipline and its history internationally, I describe how research and graduate education in Library- and Information Science developed in Sweden during the 20^th century. A major part of the thesis is an analysis of three reports from the chosen time period which are all, with slightly different prerequisites, trying to find a solution to the problem of how to establish Library- and Information Science as an academic discipline in Sweden.

This master's thesis deals with the interest in comics among students at the social science programme in an upper secondary school. The history of comics and the reading habits of comics have also been examined. For the completion of this study 54 students, 19 boys and 35 girls, took part in a questionnaire. The results of this statistical survey shows that the department of comics at Malmö city public library plays an insignificant role concerning the interest and reading of comics for the students. The main readings of comics for the students are in the daily paper, which resembles reading habits of adults.

The structure of the Swedish public library field has been evolving during the last decades. The traditional mission of educating the citizens to become responsible, democratic and knowledgeable members of society has in a way led to the integration between public and school libraries. Lately new co-operational models have been under debate and a sense of resistance has arisen because of the economical and market influences. In parallel with closure of library branches new libraries have evolved in malls and wash houses and some with self-service with no use of Librarians. This work shows how co-operation in rural areas finds the common goals for the people living there who are concerned about keeping the service needed including the public library and thus using existing means and crossing borders of commercial thinking.

The aim of this thesis is to study the conditions three public libraries have to be a resource for university students. The libraries are all situated at a distance from universities that allow the students to commute between the university and their homes. These students often make the same demands on the public library as they do on the university library. In order to conduct this study the frame factor theory has been used. This theory was developed by pedagogic scholars during the 1960s and focuses on how the framework surrounding the school affects the learning results.

Since reading difficulties is a growing problem in Society and a problem that hinders Children to take an active part in every day life, I wanted to investigate how the School Library can be an educational resource for students with reading difficulties. Using qualitative interviews, I have gained insight into how three school Librarians and two teachers work with Students with reading difficulties at two different Schools.The Respondents feel that they have the Knowledge necessary to work with students with reading difficulties, but Wish they had more Resources in terms of Time and Staff to help Students achieve School Goals even better. There are always new assistive technology for Students with Reading Difficulties, and an important part of the Educational work of the School Library, is to be informed of the Facilities available and how they work. I show, in my Research the importance of cooperation between school libraries and teachers to provide the students with reading difficulties the love of reading and work to promote reading. It is important that the School Librarian is an integral part of the School's Team to take full advantage of every opportunity to help the Reading Impaired Students with Information and finding the right Reading Level.

The main purpose of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine how Swedish upper secondary school Librarians and related staff relate to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The research is placed in the all-embracing context of information literacy and source criticism on the Internet. The study was carried out in the form of qualitative interviews and based on two theoretical bases: firstly, the concept of cognitive authority stipulated by Patrick Wilson, and secondly the idea that Wikipedia has a draw towards late modern epistemological assumptions. The latter theory was also associated with the perceptions of knowledge among the library staff interviewed.

The Swedish institute of racial biology was the first of its kind in the world. The purpose of their activity was to gather information about the different kind of racial characters of the Swedish population. They did this by traveling around the country gathering pictures and statistic information. In 1958 it was decided that the institute was going to get integrated with the University of Uppsala and change its research focus to a more medical genetic. Most of the research material also got integrated into the university?s library.The purpose of this paper is to find out how the institutes collection has been handled through the ages and if there have been any controversy or debate about it.

The aim with this masters thesis is to investigate how gender is presented in Swedish picture books, in order to give Librarians and other actors in the field knowledge about what kind of books they supply impressionable children with. I investigate if and how the changes concerning gender-equality in the Swedish society during the last 25 years are reflected in childrens literature, and compare how men and women are portrayed in four books from the early 1980s with four books from the 2000s. My study is delimited to three aspects of character formation, introduced by Maria Nikolajeva: description of psychology, actions and relations to other characters. It is carried through by consultation of Yvonne Hirdmans theory of how men and women are held apart and that the man in this relation constitutes the norm as well as Nikolajevas list of typical male and female characteristics. By reading and interpreting the chosen books, I analyse both text and pictures.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the road towards a modern library in the southern archipelago of Gothenburg between the years 1943 and 1976. The archipelago consists of about thirty smaller and larger islands, of which seven are inhabited throughout the year. Styrsö and the surrounding islands composed a municipality of their own until 1973. In January 1974 it became a part of the municipality of Gothenburg, this is also the year when the only bridge in the archipelago was ready to be taken into use, between Donsö and Styrsö. There is no bridge between the mainland and the islands.

The aim of this Master's thesis was to examine the political and cultural reasons for making music materials compulsory at Danish public libraries by the new library act of 2000. The aim was also to examine how the public libraries have responded to this reform. To answer these questions a literature study was conducted as well as interviews. The results of the literature study indicated that the main reason for making music materials compulsory is to increase the influence of the library users. The study of the debate concerning the new library act showed that a majority of the Danish political parties as well as the Danish library organizations had a positive attitude towards the new obligation.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine in what way the introducing of library plans in three municipalities have affected the work in library organizations. We base our study on a new institutionalist perspective, which focuses on changes in organizations from a social and interpretative perspective. By using this theoretical framework, it is possible to study how interpersonal relations affect the development in library organizations. Through qualitative interviews with ten Librarians, we investigate how the establishing of library plans has influenced, and been influenced by, the library field and by the environment, i.e.

The aim of this master's thesis is to describe the management of free Internet resources in three Swedish research libraries. With the starting point in the increased quantity and importance of these resources, together with reflections on the change of the concept of collection, the thesis shows how and to what extent these freely accessible Internet resources are being integrated in the day-to-day work with collection development. It also elucidates the problems with the free Internet resources from the research libraries points of view. The study is based upon analyses of collection management literature and qualitative interviews with Librarians at the chosen libraries. The thesis shows that the research libraries still have not come very far in their work of integrating the free Internet resources in their collections.

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the special services for immigrants which are offered by Swedish libraries on their different levels regional, local and school as well as immigrants experiences of the library services and how these services and experiences conduct themselves to the development of the harmonic multicultural society. The methods used were interpreting reflexive interviews with immigrants and Librarians. The guiding theory in this study was a three-phase model by Gillis Herlitz according to which a newcomer goes through three stages in an adaptation period. Phase 1 is a positive honeymoon phase, that later is replaced by phase 2, a critical disappointment period, which then ideally should be resolved in phase 3, where the individual reaches a balancing stage of cultural adaptation. The results of my observations indicate that the performances of the different libraries seem to operate in a way that corresponds to the different phases in this model.

The aim of this thesis was to understand and illuminate how readingpromotion projects can be carried out, what sort of activities they mightcontain and what sort of lasting impressions they might make. We choseto examine reading promotion projects because we consider thepromotion of reading and literacy a vital and important part of thelibraries work. The study took place at the city library of Uddevalla andthe projects included in the study were all directed towards children andyouth.The theory used in the thesis was Aidan Chambers?s model of theReading Circle which consists of the four themes of selection,?reading?, response and the enabling adult. Methods used were semistructuredinterview, document studies and observation.The results show that reading promotion projects benefit from cooperationbetween the adults involved and that education of the adultsin order to indirectly target the children is an effective way of spreadingthe love of reading.

An increasing number of scholarly publishers are beginning to make their journals available electronically. At the same time there is a growing amount of exclusively electronic journals freely accessible on the Internet. These are facts that Librarians have to take into consideration.This master's thesis aims to describe the electronic journal and its role in Swedish academic libraries. In a review of current literature about electronic journals, the authors discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and their impact on scholars, publishers and libraries. To investigate the situation in Sweden, a questionnaire was sent out to 43 academic libraries.Questions were raised about the selection and acquisition of electronic journals, access, technology and economy.The results show that almost half of the 35 responding libraries offer electronic journals to their users.