The aim of this Masters thesis is to study opinions about the Swedish hospital libraries and their activities for the patients, in a selection of Swedish library journal articles. The theoretical starting point is grounded in Laclau and Mouffes discourse theory. The empirical material consists of 43 articles from three library journals; Biblioteksbladet, Blänkaren and DIK-forum, published between 1990 and 2004. These are analysed through a reading scheme in four levels. In the empirical material two themes appear; the culture theme and the patient information theme.

The purpose of this investigation is to study how librarians experience bookcrossing. We focused on the two following questions: Which variations are there in librarians conceptions of bookcrossing as literature exchange and reading support activity? Which variations are there in librarians conceptions of bookcrossing compared to other methods of literature exchange and reading support? Bookcrossing is an international book club where you share your books by leaving them at public places. The thesis is focused on librarians? conceptions and not the conceptions of members of bookcrossing.

In this two years master?s thesis I examine the library?s representation of research and its influence upon the relationship between the library practice and the research practice. I also intend to find out what controls the representation and if it is possible to see changes in the representation over time. My source material has been texts published in the Swedish library journal ? and social domain ? Biblioteksbladet during the last decennium (2001?2011).

The aim of this thesis is to compare two different classification schemes with each other and see what the differences and similarities are when classifying literature concerning film and television. One of the schemes is of general kind, Klassifikationssystem för svenska bibliotek (SAB) and the other is a special system, FIAF Classification scheme for literature on film and television. The focus of the examination is on comparing the structure, contents and division of firstly the main classes and secondly on comparing the notation and the auxiliary tables in the schemes. The theoretical framework of the comparison is based upon theory of classification but the conclusions drawn are though mostly of a more subjective character. In addition to the comparison itself interviews have been made with four libraries, two with experiences of SAB and two with experiences of FIAF.

The national bibliography is an important tool in information retrieval. Bibliographies as lists of books have existed for centuries, but the national bibliography as we refer to it today, as a directory of the total national imprint, has only existed for about 50 years. The object of this thesis is to investigate music documents in Scandinavian national bibliographies. The method I have used for this investigation is a comparative study of the music departments in the national bibliographies in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The investigation is performed by answering the following questions: How do Norway, Sweden and Denmark live up to IFLAs Guidelines and recommendations for the national bibliography? Can one discern any differences between the three countries in this area? The documents in focus are sheet music and phonograms.

 This bachelor?s thesis purpose is to examine how library staff experiences the meeting with non-Swedish speaking users of public libraries, and how they solve different situations. Today there is not much research on this subject but we find these questions important to study because we think it is good to be aware of the situations that can arise and discuss how to solve any problems. To have a basis for this qualitative study we conducted group interviews with library staff, where they are asked about their experiences with non-Swedish speaking users. In the analysis the results of the interviews are compared to previous research and related to communication theory, which is the theoretical framework for this study.

The aim of this study is to examine how public librarians in small Swedish municipalities experience their professional roles. As part of examining such an abstract subject as experiences we also examine what tasks they perform, which will function as a support of the analysis. The theoretical frame-work is based on librarian identities worked out by Anders Ørom and a model of professional roles worked out by Maj Klasson. The analytical procedure consists of both deductive and inductive viewpoints. The empirical material consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews with five librarians that work in public libraries located in municipalities with less than 12 500 inhabitants.

This thesis presents a new way of providing library users with reference services, namely chat (text based digital reference service in real time). Our research questions focus on the role of reference service, a comparison of chat reference to other reference forms, and the interest for real-time, digital reference. Our literature review covered the areas of digital reference and reference theory, the results of which showed that an ongoing debate hardly exists among Swedish librarians on the topic of reference work. We interviewed librarians from the three different Swedish chat reference projects existing at the time of our study. Most interviewees were very positive about chat reference.

The aim of this Bachelor's thesis is to examine library directors'views on weeding in Swedish public libraries. The researchquestions posed are: What formal goals and criteria govern theweeding process?; How are these goals and criteria accountedfor?; How do the library directors view the weeding in relationto the roles of the collections?The theoretical framework consists of a division of weedingcriteria inspired by Stanley J. Slote, and a slight adaptation ofMichael K. Buckland's roles of collections.

With an increased empowerment of the users, and a dependence on outside critics, one wonders what kind of role the librarians have in a context where qualitative literature is discussed. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between librarians private and professional views on qualitative fiction, in order to be able to discuss their role as quality intermediaries in a user oriented context.The method used, is the qualitative, semistructured interview. This author interviewed seven librarians from three different libraries in Sweden. The theoretical emphasis partly relies on the ten words of qualitative value that Inger Elam and Bengt Brülde discusses in their respective texts, partly on David Garvins quality assessment theory, which defines several quality categories divided between an absolute and a relative quality view.Through the comparison between the private and the professional quality view, examined with the two theoretical approaches, the analysis of the interview material shows that there lies a complexity in the librarians professional role. On the one hand, they are dependent of both the users and the critics judgements about the qualitative aspect in the work with purchasing new literature to the library.

The relation between LIS and physical bibliography is examined primarily through an analysis of such LIS literature as applies physical bibliography in research or otherwise discusses its relevance to information studies. Quite a number of scholars are stressing the usefulness of this bibliographical tradition, even though its position in LIS agenda as a whole seems to be less established. These scholars suggest that physical bibliography presents interesting conceptual and theoretical implications for many of the central objects of study in LIS, for example, knowledge organization, information retrieval, and information seeking. It is also suggested that physical bibliography could help deepen our knowledge and understanding of the digital media ecology. Physical bibliography is foremost seen as a method for the analysis of documents, a method in which not least its terminological apparatus may be a significant tool.

 This bachelor?s thesis purpose is to examine how library staff experiences the meeting with non-Swedish speaking users of public libraries, and how they solve different situations. Today there is not much research on this subject but we find these questions important to study because we think it is good to be aware of the situations that can arise and discuss how to solve any problems. To have a basis for this qualitative study we conducted group interviews with library staff, where they are asked about their experiences with non-Swedish speaking users. In the analysis the results of the interviews are compared to previous research and related to communication theory, which is the theoretical framework for this study.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine boys?/young men?s forming of masculinity and gender identity and how discussions around gender stereotypes and conceptions represents themselves in contemporary youth novels. Gender theory based upon R.W. Connell?s theoretical framework which discusses masculinities in plural is used.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine how exchange students experience looking for information in their new life situation during a semester in Prague. A further purpose is to investigate what barriers they have faced and how this affected their information behavior. Six qualitative interviews of students constitute the empirical foundation for the study. The interviewees are from six different European countries, were all participating in the Erasmus program, and all had social sciences/humanities/art as their main subject.

This masters thesis is a gender study of the role of the artist in childrens literature of art. The study comprises forty-three childrens books presenting the life of a historic, contemporary or fictional artist. The books are published from the 1960s to the present day. They are written or translated into Swedish and available in Swedish libraries. The representation of the artist is examined separately in the text and in the illustrations.