The main purpose of this study was to establish to what extent undergraduate students use reference services, what knowledge they have about those services and what their views of them are.The survey took place at Lund University Library, UB1, the main library responsible for collections in social sciences, humanities, theology and law. A total of 476 undergraduate students were asked to fill in a questionnaire, 273 accepted. The study is quantitative and was carried out during the autumn semester, 1996.The results show that the service used most frequently by undergraduate students is the reference collection. The least used service is the Internet, more than 50 percent of the students never use Internet at the University Library. In general, students are very pleased with the service given by the reference librarians, and with the collection of reference books.

The purpose of the following thesis has been to study librarians' attitudes towards comics for grown up people. I have compared the attitudes among the staff in two public libraries in Sweden, Malmö public library and Lund public library. I have conducted five interviews with librarians and observed how the comics are handled in each library. I have also carried out a literary study of the history and theories of comics. Initially a definition of comics is presented, and then an overview of the development of comics and of some theories regarding them is offered.

How do you summarize the content of a fictional work, let?s sayLord of the Rings, into a few "telling" words that may represent it? This master?s thesis is a comparative study of how library users? freely chosen tags/keywords deviate from controlled vocabulary made by professional indexers when representing fiction. The thesis answers four main questions:? Do the tags that the library users give fictional works correspond to the categories used in professional indexing in Sweden?? Do the tags follow the standards for vocabulary, semantics and syntax used when indexing professionally?? Do the tags add something to document representations?? Are there differences between the tags used for adult fiction and the tags used for children?s literature?With a starting point in indexing theories of Frederick W. Lancaster, Annelise Pejtersen, and the semiotic theory of the indexing process of Jens-Erik Mai, 383 tags from totally 70 fictional works are analyzed.

The aim of this study is to examine how the library of the Swedish Tax Agency and the Swedish Enforcment Authority have changed during the last decade. The study is based on qualitative interviews with the librarian in the two goverment agencies? primary library and four personel from three different office libraries. The result shows that the libraries hasn?t changed drastically in their role over the last decade but instead slowly decreased in use in relation to online databases..

This master?s thesis deals with problems and opportunities when it comes to cooperation between compulsory schools, upper secondary schools, school libraries and public libraries on Gotland. The goal of this thesis is to investigate which ideas exist among public librarians, school librarians and headmasters when it comes to taking responsibility for the students? information literacy, basic library knowledge and passion for books. It also examines some of the problems they meet when trying to work together around these tasks.

The information market is constantly changing. With new and improved information technology more people get access to more information faster. However, the number of people educated to handle information also increases. Business intelligence has for a long time been a well-known tool for companies to be competitive. Because of the increased access to information the competition between companies has intensified and more people have become aware of the advantages of business intelligence and how it can help them compete.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the theories and visions of five futuristic projects at children's libraries in Sweden and Denmark to investigate if these projects have approaches that are significantly different from today's best practices of the libraries and the current theories behind the children's sections.More specific questions are also asked:Are the projects taking advantage of the children's perspective or is it the adult vision of children's needs that is governing?Are the projects promoting collaborations with other actors, thereby facilitating a future development of the children's library by others than librarians?The comparisons reveal that new methods and tools are beeing developed, while the traditional ambitions and views on children and children's needs are essentially unchanged. The role of the library as a social room and meeting place has increased, while its role as a place for finding and transferring information has been challenged by Internet and home computers. The library can still compete as a public place offering relevant contents and assistance by attentive, well-educated adults.In conclusion, the futuristic projects are expected to promote greater variations between children's libraries, by presenting literature, media and information in many different and more innovative ways. Such greater diversity and multiplicity would allow the libraries to market themselves with a clearer message in order to compete with other (commercial) activities for children..

The purpose of this study is to find out how and to what extent doctors use the hospital library?s collection of print and electronic medical journals. Major changes have the last years occurred in the journal collection. The journals are very costly and little is known about the user satisfaction with them. Therefore it?s important to examine how satisfied the users are with the collection and how they utilize it.

The purpose of this thesis was to figure out the feelings that librarians felt towards the e-books at the library. And if it affects their work at the library, especially from a financial point of view. The reason I decided to do this study is because the subject of e-books has become bigger in the last couple of years, and that I got the feeling that the librarians didn?t like them that much. So I did six interviews with six different librarians from different libraries to see if they felt the same thing or if they are in fact positive towards them.The results I received from my study were that the librarians are positive to the e-book.

The aim of this study was about how librarians in Sweden work with their web page to reach young people between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Most of the youths in Sweden today use Internet every day for several reasons, and the library should have an obvious place there as well. It shouldbe obvious because almost all youths uses Internet every day and therefore the library needs to be seen there as well to reach out to them. Earlier research has shown that librarians and youths think differently in this question. Youths think that the library web page is more important for the librarythan the librarians do.How do the librarians work with marketing for youths on the web page? Do their policy documents help them in their work?To study this area we have interviewed librarians from six quite large public libraries from different parts of thecountry.

The aim of this thesis is to discuss selected parts of cataloguing both from a practical and a theoretical viewpoint. It presents the basic grounds for cataloguing of printed as well as non-printed materials. The focus lies on the main entry heading and its author/title problem concerning film. The thesis theoretical part consists of an analysis of central documents dealing with the author concept from both a library- and information science perspective and a film science perspective. The practical part consists of interviews from two Swedish public libraries, which have different approaches on presenting films.

This thesis is about how the library can help immigrants integrate into theswedish society. By studying leading documents of the libraries in Malmö,Stockholm and Umeå in search for how the relate to work consideringimmigrants and integration I have studied the library as a bridge betweenbeing included and excluded in the society. The thought is that the libraryopens the door to new worlds both for immigrants and born swedes toobtain knowledge about a culture different from their own.In my thesis I reached the conclusion that library on a day to day basisworks with the integrationprocess for immigrants. Although the leadingdocuments should evolve since they show gaps and seem somewhatmisguiding in their presentation of the libraries function. The librariesshould work more with analysis of the environment that they are active in sothat they are more individualized for the people around it.

The aim of this thesis is to map the research area of scientific collaboration within Library and Information Science LIS. The purpose is to find out who is doing research in this area, who they cite and if they get cited by other scientists outside of LIS. Scientific collaboration is an interdisciplinary research area with researchers from different disciplines such as LIS, human-computer interaction, psychology and sociology. We have concentrated our study to North America, Ireland, Great Britain and Scandinavia. In order to find researchers, we visited the websites of all universities with library and information science faculties in the chosen countries.

This thesis applies a discourse theoretical approach in order to examine in whatways and with what possible meanings the library at KVINFO participates in the overall gender discourse in society. This means that our reading takes place at a metatheoretical level, focussing on the library as a constructor of meaning in relation to society's gender discourse.Besides the actual reading, the thesis argues for the fruitfulness of using both a discourse theoretical and a feministic perspective in the field of Library and Information Science. By looking at libraries in general through a lens provided by these perspectives, libraries are staged as battlegrounds for competing discourses,that attempt to promote its particular knowledge claim on how reality should be perceived.The reading shows that it is possible to perceive the library at KVINFO as amaterial articulation that takes shape by and is part in a feministic counterdiscourse against the masculinistic hegemonic discourse, which throughout ?hisstory? has positioned women as ?the other?, and established men as the normative category in society, including the libraries. Through its practise KVINFO has contributed to a change in the collective identity ascribed to women.

The starting point for this study is the situation for immigrants during the process of integration. This study aims to describe and discuss, with a broad approach, if certain information needs arises when immigrants meet the Swedish labour market and in such a case, do they use the library and how does the public libraries meet those needs. A secondary aim is to help increase the understanding of immigrants and forming a basis for further efforts by the libraries to improve services for immigrants and point at areas where there is a need for further research. - Which expectations and demands meets immigrants on the labour market and which library needs are possibly generated by this? - What services and range of material do the libraries offer immigrants and how are they marketed at the libraries homepages on the Internet? - Do immigrants from outside the western culture use the library and in that case how? Swedish human capital and Swedish social capability are identified as demands that are often held by operators on the labour market.