The view on which kind of fiction that should be mediated to the public through the Swedish public library system has since the late 60´s been dominated by what in this Master?s thesis is called: ´the discourse on quality of literary fiction´. The aim of this thesis is to examine to which extent this discourse still plays an active role in the Swedish public library system or if that discourse has been replaced by a more market-led, demand responsive view, where the features of ´quality´ and ´culture´ have been downplayed and replaced by a ´customer?s service view´ on how and why fiction should be mediated to the public. The methodological and theoretical perspective in this thesis is led by the understanding of the discourse analysis in Michel Foucault?s ´The Archaeology of Knowledge´.

AbstractPurpose/Aim: To describe in-classroom use of mobile phones amongst teenagers.Material/Method: The data was collected through as use of focus groups and field studies.Main results: The main findings confirm the findings of other studies on teens and mobile phones. Teens use their mobile phones for much more than just sending text messages and making calls, there are many different types of localized usages. There is also a strong emotional connection between the device, its content and the user.Keywords: mobile phone, teens, classroom, focus groups, observation, field studies, mobility..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of this thesis is to study the phenomenon of read/write OPAC by looking at how students at Pennsylvania University use PennTags in order to influence document descriptions in the library catalogue. The main questions to be answered are to what extent PennTags is being used in different subject areas and what users contribute to document descriptions through tagging in different subject areas. Studying the posts created by a sample of PennTags users from a quantitative approach I try to find out if there is reason to believe that the activity of users and users? possibility to make meaningful contributions are dependent of the subject matter being dealt with in documents described, as anticipated by the theory of pace layering. I find that user interest in influencing the library catalogue through PennTags appears to be low in general, with exception for in the subject areas of the main classes Language and literature and Social sciences in Library of Congress Classification.

To complete an overweight treatment program is associated with better weight loss. Previous studies have in principle focused on drop-out from the entire program, not individual parts of a program. Factors previously shown to influence the patients´ weight loss results are: frequency of individual meetings with a professional, the lack of social support from family or friends, the lack of motivation and in a few studies vacations. In several studies the drop-out patients have stated that their reasons for drop-out were dissatisfaction with the staff and the program design. Drop-out has also been shown to be connected with difficulties in adherence to the diet.

In this thesis I have chosen to study the use of crowdsourcing in Swedish archival institutions as well as the influence this methodic platform has on the work of modern archivists. This also raises the question whether the nature of the platform is in any way influenced by the attitude working professionals might have towards crowdsourcing as a legitimed working method. This investigation is based on case studies and interviews with archivists from select Swedish institutions and also the methodology of two now ongoing crowdsourcing projects.The theoretical framework on which this composition is based comes from the work of Gregory Asmolov and his work on crowdsourcing platforms and their functionality as tools of governing. Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is applied to analyze how the method of crowdsourcing is utilised by archival institutions and influenced by their daily routine in conjunction with Governmentality as the chosen way of studying how these platforms might control their users.From the results of the performed case studies, two discourses emerged based on the view on quality concerning gathered information amongst the involved subjects. The first of these discourses places it´s trust and faith in users themselves where validity is of a lesser concern than the actual availability of information through the concept of ?wisdom of the crowds?.

Public libraries have an important roll of making information accessible to all people. This democratic right supports the cultural development in our society. When public libraries build websites offering information and services it can sometimes cause obstacles for impaired users. It is therefore our purpose to evaluate a selection of websites and library plans to examine how the libraries work with accessibility for these users. This thesis is based on theories of cognitive and human computer interaction, and information architecture.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate a few economy students? perceptions of user education connected to essay work, focusing on aspects of information literacy of importance to the studies and the role of the user education in this context. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach. Five economy students were interviewed regarding their experiences of working with information, their perceptions of user education and its impact on their essay work. The interviews were transcribed and analysed with Bruce?s (1997) relational model of information literacy.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate and analyse how the concept of lifelong learning is expressed in political documents concerning public libraries and education and how it can be related to earlier concepts of education within the discourse of public libraries. Focus is the official approach to the concept of lifelong learning and public library. The documents examined contain the political aims for education and culture policy on a national and local level. The theories used in the study concern the background and meaning of the concept of lifelong learning, they describe public libraries and their earlier perspectives of education and they also give a picture of practices of governing within the framework of public libraries. The purpose is to see how the speech in the documents is reflected in discourses of society and public library.

To complete an overweight treatment program is associated with better weight loss. Previous studies have in principle focused on drop-out from the entire program, not individual parts of a program. Factors previously shown to influence the patients´ weight loss results are: frequency of individual meetings with a professional, the lack of social support from family or friends, the lack of motivation and in a few studies vacations. In several studies the drop-out patients have stated that their reasons for drop-out were dissatisfaction with the staff and the program design. Drop-out has also been shown to be connected with difficulties in adherence to the diet.

The aim of this master thesis is to study how the development of a public library by means of ideas and methods from the private sector can be related to traditional core values. We base our study on institutional theory, which focuses on norms and values in an organisation, and new institutional theory, which focuses on how organisations are influenced by changes in the environment. We also use New Public Management with a market focus to analyze the implications of a development towards a more market oriented view.The method used is that of a case study of a new library concept, Idea Stores in London. Idea Stores are a number of new public libraries in Tower Hamlets developed from the results of a major opinion survey about libraries. The Idea Stores combine traditional library services with elements of adult education and lifelong learning in a partnership with local learning centres.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to explore the image of the librarian from three groups: librarians, researchers and directors of staff from industrial companies. The purpose was also to study the image of the future librarian as the Swedish School of Library and Information Science at the University College of Borås introduces it. As my theoretical framework I used communication theories and marketing theories. I searched answers to the following questions: - Is there any resemblance at all between the common stereotypes of the librarian and the images given by the participants of the survey? - How do the librarians view themselves? - What is the image of the librarian among the researchers who use the services of the library? - What is the image of the librarian among the directors of staff from the industrial companies? - What is the image of the librarian given by an educational institution during the basic education? I contacted the participants and asked them to draw a picture of a librarian and write a short text about the picture.

This master's thesis deals with how a school class of 19 students that are 12 years old,perceive the conception of the library and its activities, and how this can be studied by usingfour different approaches: analysis of the children's drawings, analysis of the children'sessays and analysis of their answers to questions in an inquiry and in interviews. Theories ofhow children learn, develop and perceive the world are briefly presented, as we11 as theorynecessary for the analysis.The four different techniques produced in general the same result; the children displayed thesame thoughts, knowledge and values in the drawings, in the essays, in the inquiry andduring the interviews. The children participating look upon a library as mainly a building,though sometimes also a room, where there are books..

Studies of networks, fields and of communicative circulations complement each other. This master thesis is a biographical study of an author and journalist, Gustaf Montgomery GM, his network in Sweden of the early 19th century, and a study of his authorship and literary career. The starting-point of the study is GM:s change of field from the conservative to the liberal in 1832. The aim is to give explanations to this change and to describe how the change in turn effected the network. The method used is critical of sources.

The purpose of this MSc thesis is to examine the retrieval effectiveness of two Web search engines with queries from the academic discipline of Classical Studies. The two search engines are chosen to represent two different types Google as a broad general search engine and Argos as a specialised search engine for the subject of Classical Studies. The search engines are compared for precision among the first twenty results returned for thirty queries. In order to avoid bias in the study, the queries are based on real users' information needs. Due to the subjective character of the concept of relevance, the study is performed with five different experiments with five different definitions of relevance.