The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine libraries which combine the functions of school- and public library and to evaluate the staff?s experience and attitude towards a library profile with the emphasis on children and youth. The purpose of the study is also to examine how the libraries work with several tasks and functions within different target groups with different needs.With new institutionalism and Scandinavian institutional theory the thesis examine the library as an organization and what influences the construction. With a model that describes how the library constitutes four different rooms in the society I investigate the different functions.The methodology is qualitative with interviews of five persons of the staff, four librarians and one library assistant. The study examines how the staff that works at two libraries under similar conditions experiences their tasks.

The aim of this master thesis was to find out about librarians opinions of childrens libraries on the Internet, if it is a resource to reach children. Qualitative interviews were conducted with three librarians who had participated in the construction and development of childrens libraries on the Internet. IT and the Internet play an important role in childrens lives and children are using it to a greater extent. Libraries have begun to integrate IT and Internet into their services and are offering service on the Internet. The public library websites are usually for grown-ups and very few are directed to children.

During the last 20 years a new category of schools, schools for children with special needs, has settled to be a growing part of the Swedish school system. This is despite the political aim in Sweden to achieve an educational inclusion. The aim of this study is to compare the school situation for children with special needs in regular schools with the situation in schools for children with special needs. To investigate the routines associated with the change of school and the role of a neuropsychological diagnosis in the process. The main research questions were if the school is adapted to the needs of the child from a neuro-didactic point of view, whether the special school provides something the public school doesn?t and if the diagnosis helps to take pedagogical measures.

This thesis investigates young people´s (16-21) preferences in reading through a survey including interviews and questionnaires. The groups attitudes towards reading and libraries, their reading and library habits, and to what extent eight libraries had bought the preferred literature were also examined. Some reports from the 80´s were used to find the changes. The result shows that youngsters read and visit libraries somewhat more frequently. Trivial literature is not as dominant, more teenage-books were read.

This master thesis is written in the purpose to discover which attitudes the public libraries in Sweden and Denmark have towards offering popular music to their patrons, how they motivates their choices and why they make the choices they make. The essay focuses on the differences and similarities between the Swedish and Danish libraries and relates their attitudes to the Finnish researcher Sanna Taljas three discourses regarding music policies in libraries.We examined this by sending out a question sheet to public libraries in Sweden and Denmark, the questions were regarding popular music's place in the library and how they build up their music collection. The question sheets were sent out to a total of 116 libraries of which 46 were Danish.The conclusions we drew after our examination were that Danish and Swedish public libraries have a lot in common in the way they regard and distribute popular music in the public libraries. Both of the respondent groups puts user demand high on the priority list as well as having a collection that holds significant works of many genres..

AbstractThere is a lot of confusion when it comes to defining Special Education. An example of this appears here by a statement from Assarson (2007) "Special Education initiates a special pedagogy, but contains no innate sense of what is the special component in it" (p. 52, authors? translation). This study is an attempt to clarify the elements of the concept.

The purpose of this Masters Thesis is to explore the process of selection that librarians face when selecting and acquiring cultural magazines to public libraries. The methods used are qualitative interviews and literary studies. A brief review is given of acquisition policies at public libraries and of cultural magazines and the important role they play in public libraries. Five interviews have been made at five public libraries to find out what factors affect the process of selection when it comes to cultural magazines. Two theories are used as a basis for the analysis of the result of the interviews and literary studies.

This study aims to examine the views on digitization of eight respondents, all working at different libraryinstitutions in Sweden, and how their views are reflected in their library's digitization strategies. The poll wasconducted on the basis of Ingrid Mason's theory of information standards, their structure and sociopoliticalnature. The informantion standards are divided into three aspects, curatorial, semantic and technical, and theyaffect selection of, intellectual and physical access to the digitized material, which in the end is what constitutes the digital cultural heritage.The background to the study is that the Swedish library institutions in the current situation lacks a nationalstandard or a common strategy for the digitization of cultural heritage, while it is still implemented digitizationprojects at many library institutions. The method used is qualitative, structured interviews with open-ended questions.The study shows that one of the main motives behind the libraries' digitization projects is to make librarymaterials available in a new way, creating greater opportunities for the users to take advantage of the material.The library users are the ones who mainly control what is digitized, although aspects of preservation ismentioned. Furthermore, it appears that the respondents believe that digitization offers improved capabilities tosearch and learn more about the collections, but the actual work of image capture, the addition of metadata,presentation to users and long-term preservation is very complex.Views on what it is to be digitized, how the material should be selected and provided with metadata and howit should be presented to users is what creates the standards that libraries use when they digitize their materials,and digitization of library materials creates new conditions for new users to access and use library material.This is a two years master?s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies..

In the wake of the electronic revolution digital library has become one of the central themes concerning libraries. The present study takes up the question whether digital library can function in the same way as the conventional library. The question can obviously be posed from different perspectives, e.g. technological-, the user-, or the organizational perspective. The study investigates if (and how) digital library can have the same functions as the traditional library.

The aim of this study is to understand how the library environment affects the experiences and feelings of public library users. In order to concretise this, the study sets out from the public library in Bollebygd. We wanted to find out how the library users experience the library environment. Does the library environment affect the meeting between library users? How does the environment affect their moving patterns inside the library? Which environmental factors influence the users' experiences? Our questions were: how do users experience the library environment - as a mediating space for information and culture? - as a social room and meeting place? The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists of qualitative observations and interviews, and literature studies.

The purpose of the master thesis was to reflect and analyze music library activities and policies in the public libraries in the area around the city of Borås, in the south-western part of Sweden. With this thesis I also wanted to look at the interaction between the public libraries, the music school and the music associations in the same area. To investigate these matters, qualitative method was used in the form of interviews with seven librarians from seven different libraries and five representatives of different local music organizations. Other methods used were observations and source studies. The literature used discusses the role of the music department of public libraries as well as that of a music librarian working in a public library.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the indexing of fiction for adults looks like in the public libraries that don?t buy indexed records for fiction from Bibliotekstjänst (BTJ). The questions that I want these libraries to answer is: - Public libraries that index fiction for adults themselves: 1. What tools do they use when indexing?, 2.

As public libraries in Sweden receive the bulk of their budget from local government funding, which has stayed static or, at best, seen small increases, libraries have been faced with inadequate resources with which to satisfy increasing expectations from users. As few libraries are over-funded in the first place, ways may have to be found to combat this situation. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine alternative sources of funding for Swedish public libraries, and my main focus of interest is that of sponsorship. The method used is a literature study combined with an empirical study, in which interviews were conducted with five persons each with long experience of working with public libraries. The literary study deals with the concept of sponsorship, and the motivations for companies to sponsor are also examined.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the development on the Swedish book market for the beginning of the 21st century. During the 21st century a lot of things have happened on the Swedish market for library books. Twenty years ago in reality only one company existed that could deliver books with the demanded equipment to the libraries, but in year 2010 there are four companies offering the same service. Other news during this time is bookshops on internet. We found this development interesting and therefore decided to contact the four companies as well as six libraries to find out what they thought of the new situation.

The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the societysystem in Austria has influenced the library system. The aim is toanalyse in what way these influences have changed during thegrowth and development of the public library system and how it isdisplayed in each separate library branch. The focus of myinvestigation has been the municipality public libraries in Vienna,and mainly the three libraries in the third district of the city. Themethod I have used is literature studies, examining and analysingsource material from the internal archive of the public libraries inVienna. I have also used the qualitative interview method in orderto examine the situation in the selected libraries Rabengasse,Erdbergstraße and Fasangasse.As there is no common library law, there are significantdifferences in the library structure in different parts of Austria andeach municipality decides how they want to prioritize the libraries.Since the public libraries of Vienna are well organized together inBüchereien Wien, the library structure in the separate librarybranches is coordinated.