This master thesis in library- and information science is about the intermediary function of the library room from an environment-psychological point of view. Young people are a group in society who often reduce their visits to the library when growing up. There are lots of reasons for this maybe more attractive activities occur outside the library doors, making the young choose not to use the library. But if the library interior is attractive in itself, and has a welcoming atmosphere, there might be a change and the young people may well choose to pay the library a visit. What is important to young people how do they want their library room to look? Our purpose is to see how the physical environment affects young people in Libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how two separate museums have realised the task of digitizing their collections, as well as to learn what options, possibilities and resources have been available to them during this process. Additionally, the aim here is to find how the two museums have dealt with problems in connection to the digitization projects, since there are as-of-yet no established regulations or standards to guide them in their digitization efforts. However, national and international working groups seeking to establish better collaboration between archives, Libraries and museums ALM institutions have recently begun to formulate recommendations and suggested standards. Some of these recommendations have been used here as a theoretical framework in the examination of the two museums. The research questions posed are: What options, possibilities and resources have been available to the museums in their digitization projects, in terms of economy, staff, technical equipment and time?; For what purpose are the museums digitizing their collections?; and How does their purpose influence the process and chosen procedures? Also discussed here is how the museums relate to some of the existing recommendations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the relationship between the socially constructed genders is manifested in American library science. To visualize gender, bibliometric analyses of peer reviewed articles published in three core journals of library science between 1980 and 2000 inclusive, are performed. The three journals are: College and Research Libraries, Journal of Academic Librarianship and Library Quarterly. Questions: 1. Does gender affect the publishing process regarding the distribution of female and male authors? 2.

Fountain of Knowledge? The Changing Role of the Library at the Upper Secondary School Level. There have been many changes in the Swedish society in general, and in the school system and hence the school library in particular during the last decade. The aim of this master thesis is then to study what students at the upper secondary school level consider to be the optimal school library to meet their specific information needs at school. In addition to and in comparison with this, the aim is also to study the present conditions of the upper secondary school library as described in documents, reports and other studies in this field.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to study librarians? views on children and young people as Internet users in Swedish Libraries. It examines what types of problems and possibilities the librarians see with children?s and young people?s use of the Internet, how these problems might be solved, and what they think about regulations and filters. Qualitative interviews were conducted with nine librarians, and their statements were analysed with David Buckingham?s After the death of childhood as a theoretical foundation.

This thesis should be regarded as an integrated research synthesis. The purpose has been to analyse how the literary sociologist Lars Furulands model the literary process correlates in relation to todays book market for fiction. The central problem has been: In what different ways can some of the main actors featuring in Furulands model of the literary process use, produce or provide copyright protected works of fiction which are electronically distributed? Three questions have been considered to penetrate this problem: In what different ways can to judge from some projects which have been carried through at common public Libraries electronic works of fiction be provided to their presumed readers? What reasons could there be as it appears in a number of texts that four Swedish authors have chosen to disseminate their works of fiction by the aid of the Internet? Which main functions may, according to current research, be supported by electronic media in connection with editing and retail of fiction? During this study a picture of two quite disconnected processes of publication has materialized. These processes seem to proceed parallelly to each other, without any close contact, in a traditional respectively an electronic circuit.

This thesis aims at exploring a national collaborative gateway-service, PictureAustralia, hosted at the National Library of Australia. This will be done by means of investigating some underlying principles for descriptive standards and conventions as of the library discourse which is the objective of bibliographic control and access. The reason to do this is to bring some main features of these principles into the context of a cross-institutional cooperation between Libraries, galleries/museums and archives in a picture database service. The attention will lay on the objectives of what functions the system is designed to perform to give access, as defined by Elaine Svenonius in the Intellectual Foundations of Information Organization 2000, and how these objectives will affect this particular database-service collocating performance, which is a system- and logical approach. Though, this study will be done in an explorative and qualitative way, by a case-study, which is to examine some sample metadata records emanated from different institutions in this project.

The main aim of this thesis is to study how and in which way the library personnel works with reading groups and their view of reading groups. I also want to study which role the governing- and policy documents have in the library personnel?s work. The following questions were asked.Which similarities and differences between the different library personals outlooks and acting can be interpreted from the following aspects:? Promoting reading, book selections and the leader's role?? To talk about personal subjects and to create possibilities for personal growth and increased empathy?? To promote language development and reading comprehension?The methods used in the study are a combination of interviews and observations.

Syftena med denna uppsats har varit flera. Dels att genomföra en undersökande genrediskussion av svensk chick-lit i stort där det som uppfattats som den huvudsakliga kritiken av genren omformulerats till frågeställningar. Huvudfrågan har därmed varit att ta reda på om svensk chick-lit är intressant, men också om den har några litterära kvaliteter och om den är en feministisk backlash. I uppsatsen arbetas även en definition av svensk chick-lit fram, samt empiriskt grundad teori ur materialet. Avsikten är att detta arbete ska kunna verka som förebild för andra utredningar av nya och marginaliserade genrer.

The web sites of Swedish public Libraries display a high level of heterogeneity when it comes to design and graphical user interface. The thesis is based on the opinion that the visuals of a public library web site have implications for the user as well as for the library. The design of the graphical user interface influences the attention of the user and his/her ability to absorb information. Furthermore, there is a connection between the visuals and the users opinion about the credibility of the content of the web site, as well as of the organisation itself. The research question is: Which factors may have an impact on the design of the graphical user interfaces of a public library web site? The purpose is to create an understanding for these factors and emphasize them.

The aim of this master thesis is to obtain a greater understanding of childrens choice of favourite books, insight in their reading experiences and their thoughts about the reading of these books. We also want to investigate if, and if so, how childrens librarians obtain knowledge of the childrens reading preferences and reading experiences and how they use this knowledge in their work to stimulate childrens reading. To reach our aim we have been carrying out quantitative interviews with six children aged nine to ten years and three childrens librarians working in public Libraries. As a theoretical starting point we use the reader-oriented theory and Chambers Reading circle, which states that support from adults is the most important factor in the childs reading process. The empirical results are linked to theories and earlier research and are analysed under four different themes.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how librarians perceive library plans, if they are important for their work and if so, in what ways. In order to analyze this, I have used a phenomenographic approach. My goal, by using this method, is to uncover perceptions and variations among these. The research questions are: What variations of perception of library plans exist among librarians? To what extent can the varied perceptions of library plans be linked to librarians' work? What does the variation of perception say, in relation to the expectations expressed in international and national documents, about library plans? The material used in a phenomenographic analysis consists of interviews.

This Master's thesis aims at pinpointing the political arguments that appear in the recent debate on scientific publication. There is a widely spread opinion that prices on digital resources are far too high, thus taking up a major part of the University Libraries budget, while publishing companies make high profits. It is also a common opinion that the current publishing method does not take full advantage of the possibilities of electronic publishing. Lately a number of alternative ways of publishing have been initiated and discussed, generally referred to as open access. Open access published material is available free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions on the public internet.In this thesis the minutes from four hearings held by the UK House of Commons in the spring of 2004 are examined.

The main purpose of this Master's thesis is to investigate the new librarians' experiences and skills in the context of their present work situation and the ongoing debate about the librarian's professional identity and status. Further, the authors wanted to find out whether the new librarians' experiences and knowledge developed throughout their education correspond to the requirements of the employers. Finally, they try to assess theimpact of the "academization" of the library schools on the status of the profession. The data consist of an opinion poll. The investigation is based on questionnaires distributed as a web survey.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how childrens librarians at public Libraries motivate their selection and their purchases of fiction for children and youth. The aim is also to find out what is felt like a problem at the selection process and what is not. Six childrens librarians have been interviewed in this qualitative study. On a basis of a theory of literature pedagogic perspectives the librarians were asked how they look upon purchase of fairy-tales, classics, pulpliterature and literature that contributes to the debate about man and society. They were also asked about their opinions of Bibliotekstjänst, of criticism of childrens books and how they reason about their purchases in general.