The transition from paper to electronic journals in induces a major change in academic libraries. The library must focus on customising the service to meet user needs in order to compete with other actors on the market. This situation entails the need for a marketing and management approach in library organisations. Linda Ashcroft has in previous research focused on marketing of electronic journals. She has stated the importance of simplifying the user environment of electronic journals and the importance of regaining control over electronic journals from publishers and vendors.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to present a survey of how Swedish libraries provide information services for children. In this thesis ?information? means non-fiction material and ?children? do not include preschool children. The method used is knowledge overview and the material (mostly Master theses in LIS published January 2001-June 2006) is related to user studies of children as information seekers.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the library needs of fourteen-to-fifteen-year-olds. We have limited the investigation to the significance of libraries for the teenagers in their leisure time. Our focus is the public library with a particular reference to the plans for a new local public library with a youth profile in Malmö. With a departure point in the idea that young people?s use and view of libraries is to a large extent depending on factors such as social and cultural background and lifestyle, we chose to do a qualitative interview study with eight teenagers.

The purpose of this study is to examine if digital public libraries are serendipitous environments. Serendipity in this instance is defined as finding something unexpected and valuable, while searching for something else.A survey was conducted at two Swedish digital public libraries, where the patrons were asked to fill in a questionnaire online. The questions were based on the work on serendipitous digital environments by Lori McCay-Peet, as well as considerations of human factors that could possibly influence serendipity.The result indicate that a majority of patrons experience serendipity at the digital library, although it?s still more common to do so at the physical library or on other web sites. The result also confirms the importance of taking human factors into account when studying serendipity.

The present essay concerns Walter Benjamin?s thought regarding history and temporality as he articulated it in his last work that was only published posthumously: ?U?ber den Begriff der Geschichte?. The purpose is to analyze Benjamin?s construction of historical materialism and to suggest a reading of it as directed towards an opening of history. For Walter Benjamin, every moment presents itself as a possibility of radical otherness: a possibility for things to be different.

This essay is a case study based on two sources of empirical data, qualitative interviews and responses from a questionnaire, which examines upper secondary school students? attitudes to history teaching in a museum context. The students? answers are further analyzed in relation to the concept of historical consciousness. Thus, history teaching in the museum, from a student perspective, and the students? capacity of expressing a historical consciousness in their answers, constitute the core of this essay.

This essay deals with a picture-stone that was found in a pre Christian grave during the archaeological excavations of the Viking Age harbour and trading place at Fröjel parish, Gotland, in 1999. The stone is at least 100 years older then the male grave in which it was found. The picture-stone can be dated to  late 8th century or early 9th century, and the grave is probably from the late 10th century. One of the main questions in this essay is why the people of that time re-used an older picture-stone in a younger burial. I believe that the stone was reused as a grave-gift.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study what place public libraries have in local politics, particularly from the point of view of the politicians. To answer this, I have interviewed politicians, participated as a silent observer of a public debate, and studied articles on library politics in newspapers and other press. The results show that politicians in general have a positive view of libraries and good co-operation with library professionals, and that they have a fairly up-to-date view of libraries. They are, however, less interested in library issues in general, and are often complacent with the way things are already running. The newspaper studies show that library issues are usually only discussed when a specific library is somehow in danger.

Little attention has been paid in the literature to libraryassistants in Swedish public libraries. In this bachelor thesis,the professional role, work duties, career prospects and statusof library assistants are examined at two public libraries.Because of a scarcity of published information on thedevelopment of this profession in Swedish public libraries,retired library assistants, as well as currently employedlibrary assistants, librarians and a library head wereinterviewed.Since the ?80s, work duties of library assistants havechanged, with a reduction in some of the more manualaspects of library work, the development of new duties and,overall, an increasing similarity in the duties performed bylibrary assistants and librarians.Additionally, the public perception of library assistants as acategory distinct from librarians was investigated bydistributing questionnaires to library patrons. Contrary toexpectations prompted by statements in the literature, asubstantial portion of visitors was found to be aware of thetwo separate categories.Library assistants at Swedish libraries have no careerprospects, unless they undertake studies in their own freetime and at their own cost, and obtain a librarian degree. Adifference between the situation of library assistants inSweden and corresponding professional categories in a fewother countries is that, at present and for several years, noformal education for library assistants has been available inSweden.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the development of the public library in the district of Österåker during a period of 1958-1983. The main goals have been to identify the crucial events in the history of the library within their historical context and to analyse the factors that have been important for the development: financing, location, staffing, stock of books, book-lending level and different activities for children, youngsters and adults. The consideration has been taken to reasons and consequences of these events. The hermeneutic interpretation model of interaction between parts and wholes, between reasons and results is the basic method in this research which leans mainly upon local archives in Österåker. The public library in Österåker was established in 1952 as a fusion of previously existing small libraries: the parish library in Östra Ryd, the Labour Movement?s library and the temperance movement?s library.

What is the Church? This question has been asked in many times and places. In Sweden, it seems asif there's a general identity crisis among the churches. It seems like many churches don't know whythey exist, or at least they have a very vague understanding of the full meaning of the Church.Some 50 years ago, we had a new encounter in Sweden. Immigrants from Orthodoxcountries came to live here, and they brought their church and tradition with them.

This master thesis is an attempt to study the joint-use solutions between the public library and the public preschool in the local district Kristineberg in the community of Borås. The two main questions are; what kind of joint-use library is the activity at Kristineberg? What kind of advantages and disadvantages do the actors experience from the joint-use activity at Kristineberg? The analysis is based upon the interviews with eight informants with different connections to the joint-use library and public preschool. I also use documental analysis and literature studies. Relevant theories, such as Andersson´s and Skot-Hansen´s analysis of the role of the public library and Bundys, Imhoff´s and Dornseif´s theories about joint-use libraries are presented and later used in the analysis.

The views on and the knowledge of the introduction of iron to Scandinavia have change by the history of archaeology. The results and discussions are put in the context of time and how that time is reflected in their work and texts. This limits that scholars put up to orientate themselves conceal the complex reality. The limits are changing all the time and is dependent of time and person..

Sweden?s role during the Second World War has been a matter that has been under much debate since the war?s end in 1945. The debate has however ebbed and flowed and established a discourse that Sweden was forced to give in to German demands and did so to avoid conflict that would have severely damaged Sweden. However, in 1991 a Swedish journalist Maria-Pia Boëthius published a book known as Heder och Samvete in which she explained that the Swedish concessions to Germany during the war were made out of profit rather than giving in to German demands. This sparked a debate that ended with the establishment that Sweden compromised and even broke its neutrality in favor to gain profit from the war.

Humanity has always dreamed about a better world. These dreams has manifested themselves in the vision of Utopia - the good place, but also the non-existing place. Up until World War II man still wrote optimistic descriptions of this ideal world, and spread the idea through literature. In the aftermath of the atomic bomb and under the influence of the cold war, these publications seized to surface in literary surroundings. Despite this utopia did not die - it has only changed.