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.

A general topic underlying this master thesis is how the public library is being transformed through the subversion and re-articualtion of meaning according to different discourses. The aim of the study can be divided in to levels of analysis. At the first level, the aim is to investigate how categories such as users, needs and vision are articulated in a specific case ?the visionary project Garaget in Malmö, a project which in part include a public library inspired by Idea Store. The next level of analysis sets out to explore how the case of Garaget is related to a totalizing discursive struggle over meaning within the element the public library.

The aim of this bachelor-thesis is to study how postgraduates approach open access during times of change within scholarly communication. Our theoretical framework is based upon Knorr Cetinas epistemic cultures and Cullen & Chawners theory that there is a paradigmatic conflict within scholarly communication due to the fact that open access has failed to reach the same level of prominence among researchers as it has within research Libraries. We interviewed six postgraduates at Malmö högskola in order to find answers to our research questions. We identified a shared epistemic culture among the postgraduates, which can be explained by the fact that being postgraduates, they all share similar experiences and values. We chose to call this epistemic culture the horizontal epistemic culture.

The aim with this study was to examine which information sources are used by the librarians in the process of changing automated library system and why. Furthermore it was of interest to examine whether there are any correlations between variables environment, information quality, information availability, information need and information sources. I used a quantitative method that was carried out in form of a nationwide survey. Questionnaires were sent out to all the Swedish Libraries that had change library systems sometime between the years 2000.

The purpose of this study has been to examine reading habits and the use of the library by pre­school teachers in a mainly multicultural community, and also explore to what extent activities in the local library are aimed at preschoolers.The study used a sociocultural approach based on Vygotsky?s theories of learning and development and Söderbergh?s theory of early childhood language development, and was carried out during the summer 2009. The methodology used was both quantitative and qualitative, with a combination of questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaires were sent out to each section of the municipal pre­schools within the catchments area of the local public library in a multicultural suburb of Uppsala. Three short interviews were carried out with staff at the local and main library branches, as well as library staff at the County Council.The results show that, although preschool teachers find reading important in their work, many teachers read spontaneously and/or sporadically.

In the new Library Act of 2014, it is stated that public library supply should be characterized by quality. To investigate what this means for the library, I do a functional analysis of ideas of librarians' views on quality and how they work with purchasing, weeding and mediation. I have chosen to limit the essay to fiction for adults in Swedish public Libraries. By combining the basal idea analysis, where I investigate librarians' ideas about quality, with an operational analysis of ideas, where I examine the effects librarians' quality ideas get for the daily work, Iwant to find out the librarians' quality ideals.The material I analyze consists of 18 questionnaires, filled out by librarians with responsibility for purchasing and / or thinning in Libraries across Sweden. The analysis is done with an analytical schedule, that consists of a number of opposing ideal types taken from previous research on quality, purchasing, thinning or mediation.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine and analyse how the public librarys mission is interpreted and formulated in a selection of library related journals. The journals are both international scientific referee journals from the LIS field and journals with a closer connection to the practitioners within the public library field. The idea is that these journals can be seen as windows to an academic theoretic perspective on public Libraries, as well as to the practitioners way of talking about the librarys mission. The study also aims to examine if there is a difference in the way that the librarys mission is interpreted and discussed among theorists and among practitioners within the field. The theoretical starting-point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory, and the method is text analytic.

Sweden is today often defined as a multicultural society. The implications on organizing and providing information in public Libraries are many, since the systems presently used in the western hemisphere are not adapted to multi-cultural information. This thesis aims to outline ethical and practical problems that arise when organising and providing information concerning cultures other than western, and not least, when dealing with material in other scripts. With this theoretical framework the thesis examines the website of the International Library in Stockholm, a website built to serve users of different languages and scripts than Swedish. The research questions in this thesis are: 1, what specific problems can be distinguished within library work in a multicultural and multilingual environment? 2, what problems and needs were considered in the creation and design of the International Library?s website? And 3, can examples of problems and possible solutions of these be seen in the information and it?s organisation on the International Library?s website? The empiric material consists of the International Library?s website, and interviews with three informants involved in developing it.

The aim of this study is to investigate methods of collection development, the users? influence on selection and quality aspects, focusing on non-fiction literature in Swedish public Libraries. To find out opinions of collection development, I use the method comparative literature study. Antonio Gramsci?s concept hegemony forms the theoretical background, and hegemony as concept is related to a library context by using Maj Klasson?s text on the librarians? different positions of authorities.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the possibilities for creating a national interlibraryloan system in Sweden and to see how it could be integrated into an international network .The methods used are both qualitative and quantitative. We have sent inquiries to a numberof Libraries and we have interviewed keypersons in the interlibrary loan field in Sweden.We have reached the conclusion that in spite of several impediments there is a lot that speaksfor a Swedish national interlibrary loan system in the near future. A national bibliographicdatabase is already evolving..

The aim of this two years master thesis in Library and Information Science is to examine how librarians and library managers in the three Stockholm suburbs of Alby, Fisksätra and Rinkeby think and reason about the role of public Libraries in the integration process. The aim is also to examine whether their perception differ from that of local politicians at the municipal level. The theoretical framework is Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hanses model for analysis of the local library profile, and Jose Alberto Diaz theory on the integration process. The method used is qualitative interviews. The interviews were recorded and the content was analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results of this study show that the library services in the three suburbs, rather than being stipulated by the legal demand for special services towards immigrants, are based on the needs of the local population.

In the Swedish school library discussion, the most prominent role of the school library haslong been that of cultural centre in the school, with the main goal being to encourage children'sreading. During the 90ies there were signs of a shift in focus to the role of information centre,giving active support across the whole range of the curriculum, in the independent researchingwork of the students. At the same time severe budget cuts caused great worries for the future.The interest for the school library media centres increased during this time, many differentorganizations said they wanted to fight for better school Libraries. The purpose of the presentwork was to find out who they are, what they want and what their ideal school library lookslike. Fourteen organizations were studied, focus was on activities during 1995.

Scholarly publishing has since the introduction of electronically distributed periodicals seen a time of change, mainly in the STM-business (Science Technology and Medicine). The roles of the three main participants in the publication process; researcher, publisher and library are developing into new directions. Researchers themselves are taking a more active part in the discussion, with the boycott list from the Public Library of Science organization as an illustrating example. Reforms are being launched partly as an economical and efficiency issue, partly as an increasing desire from researchers to maintain the control of scientific end result. This Master s thesis examines how the partly conflicting goals of the participants affect the conditions for scholarly publication in an electronic environment.

This two years master?s thesis is about book circles for children, arranged by the public Libraries in Sweden. The purpose is to gain knowledge about how children experience their participation in book circles, and how they experience their own reading. It focuses on children aged 10 to 12 years, and their leisure reading. The research questions are: What are the book circles? function for the participants? How and why do the children read? What kind of literature do they like? Do the children experience that their reading has developed through their participation in the book circles? What parts of the reading process do the book circles influence?The theoretical framework is threefold.

In this two years master's thesis a regional project, Futurum.kom, is studied through the experiences of eight librarians from two of the participating Libraries. The interviewees have all attended local and regional seminars where questions about core values, target groups and the role of the public library were discussed, among others. The seminars resulted in a number of core values and target groups. During the project, a number of advertising campaigns are to be conducted. The first one of these had recently been implemented at the time of the present study. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the interviewees organizational self-perception in relation to the project.