The aim of this thesis is to study a number of standards and theories, from the two research areas human-computer interaction and psychology, about how a graphical user interface (GUI) should be composed in order to facilitate interaction between humans and computers. Special emphasis is put on how the GUI should take into consideration the strengths and limitations of human cognition and perception. A study of three web catalogues shows how these theories appear when concretised. The following questions are answered in this thesis:What guidelines and styleguides can be found that specify the design of a user-friendly GUI?How do a few library catalogues on the web match a selection of these design principles?The guidelines are extracted from literature concerning human-computer interaction, psychology, automated library systems and web design.

In this essay, a search strategy for citation index is studied. The strategy, which is essentially a citation cycle, starts with documents retrieved by a subject search, wherefrom new documents are identified following the network of citations backwards and forwards in time. Based on the theory of polyrepresentation, the strategy exploits overlaps between cognitively different interpretations of the same documents in order to automatically select references seed documents used as a starting point for the forward chaining. The purpose of the investigation is to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness of the search strategy and to find out whether the strategy can be used to expand a subject search with the help of the network of references in order to retrieve new relevant documents. Two questions are formulated: 1a.

In an international perspective the Russian children s library is a unique institution, being solely committed to children up to 14 years of age. In Russia of today it is, however, being exposed to hard pressure as the economical and social conditions have changed dramatically since the collapse of the USSR. My interest lies in examining this change of living conditions for the children s libraries and how this in turn affect their work and role in the present state. In order to view this change in a longer perspective, I compare the situation for children s libraries during the time of communist regime with that of today using documents about and from children s libraries. I have studied its legal position and conditions, financial and political state, and how the modern society affects children and youth, especially their daily cultural life.

The last few years have been characterised by increasing online communication and the emergence of social media, made possible by Web 2.0. In society as well as in research, social media is used for knowledge produc- tion and networking. One example of this is Mendeley, a social reference management tool. With answers from users all over the world, this study investigates the use of Mendeley, if the respondents use other social media and if all of this affects scientific communication. The aim is also to study what the respondents think about the future of scientific communication and if this can be related to current tendencies.The theoretic framework for this study is based on Leah Lievrouws research on the Cycle of Scientific Communication and the relationship between the ?Little Science 2.0?-scenario and the ?Big Science Retrench- ment?-scenario.A qualitative web based survey was conducted (41 answers) and complemented with an interview with a professor in environmental sciences.

In this thesis the marketing strategies of two public libraries have been explored and studied.The public library of Kalmar participates in the project GÖK which partly is a marketing project. The public library of Kalmar thereby differs from the public library of Trollhättan which is not involved in the project.The main aim of this thesis was to focus on their marketing strategies and see if there were any differences. The thesis was also concerned with the customers and their experiences of the quality of the services offered by the public libraries of Kalmar and Trollhättan, including the customers' perceptions of the operative marketing, and finally if there was a connection between marketing and customer-centered quality. Qualitative methods as well as quantitative methods were used for the collection of information .The preliminary assumption that Kalmar had a more explicit marketing strategy has been confirmed in the study. However, the customers at the public library of Trollhättan were more satisfied with the total quality of the services offered.

Z39.50 is a standard protocol designed to create an interface between diverse computer databases for diverse information needs. Since it has to be adjustable it is also complex and demands a certain degree of expertise when being set. However, the aim of this paper is not to make a theoretical description but to examine certain conditions in practice. From the perspective of Swedish research libraries two principal hypotheses are examined: 1) the implementation of a given technology (Z39.50) is primarily influenced by social circumstances, and 2) the way in which the technology is implemented will bias the results of information retrieval. For this examination we need a framework of theories concerning the relationship between technological development and society, organisational theories and database theories.

In July 2011, new regulations regarding school libraries came into effect through a new education act for Swedish schools. The wording of the Act has been the basis of much discussion in which the concepts of "school library" and "access" makes it difficult to build consensus among different parties, why this can cause difficulties in ultimately construct equal access to school library. The purpose of this survey is to examine the interpretations and practices that exist around the school library and its functions among primary school principals. The principals have been selected on the basis that they themselves (the schools) already indicated that they do not have access to their own school library within the school premises. As a theoretical starting point, I used the school library researcher David Loertscher?s taxonomy for school leaders.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the performance of queries that is expanded before translation in comparison with only translation of the queries using a bilingual dictionary, and also to see if the number of terms that was used to expand the queries was of any importance i. e. if many terms from a thesaurus helped or destroyed a query. To answer these questions i used two online thesauri, Rogets thesaurus and Merriam-Webster Online and one printed bilingual dictionary, Norstedts English-Swedish dictionary. Even though the number of examined queries is too small to draw any definite conclusions, the results suggest that expanding using a general thesaurus may have a negative effect on the queries.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the performance of queries that are expanded by 1 inflections, 2 compound splitting and 3 inflections and compound splitting combined. For compound splitting, the morphological analyser SWETWOL was used. Queries were executed in the Query Performance Analyser, QPA, containing the InQuery system. Query terms were selected from 29 topics, all of whom containing at least one compound word. Both the queries and the documents were in Swedish.

Organising knowledge in a corporate environment : a case study at the development departments of Ecophon ABThe purpose of this master's thesis is to investigate how three development departments of a technical firm could organise their collection of documents and information resources to improve their management of information. Three sets of questions have been posed: 1) How does the target group of engineers deal with information, and what problems can be identified in this process? 2) What does their collection of resources consist of, how is it organised, and what problems are apparent? 3) How can principles of knowledge organisation be applied in a corporate environment?The investigation has been carried out as a case study. Three main methods of collecting empirical data have been used: surveys, unstructured interviews and collection observations. The results of the study have highlighted three major problem areas: the collection's lack of structure and searchability, the absence of policy regarding how employers should deal with information, and the inadequate knowledge among staff on how to search for, use and disseminate information.By looking at previous research on knowledge organisation, we have been able to draw conclusions regarding how the target group could organise and manage its information and knowledge in order to achieve greater efficiency in dealing with information and carrying out work tasks.

The purpose of this bachelor's thesis is to investigate how working librariansmanage controversial media. It builds on three debates in the media about libraries and booksthat have taken place during the years of 2012 and 2013. The questiones asked were: How dolibrarians manage racist media? How do librarians manage media that instructs on how tocommit crimes? How do librarians manage sexually explicit media? And lastly, how dolibrarians manage pressure from outside of the library? The theoretical framework consists ofRobert Hauptmans division of the two kinds of ethical strands of librarianship, in this thesiscalled ?Free information? and ?Information responsibly?. The method used to collectempirical material was qualitative interviews.

This master´s thesis is a comparative study of the importance of eight factors suggested in the literature to be related to the perceived utility of the service Book a librarian (Swe. Boka en bibliotekarie). Disciplinary differences were also analysed. 73 encounters between students and librarians in 11 Swedish academic libraries were studied using a survey. Six factors were significantly related (at the .05 level) to the utility of the service.

In present-day situation many libraries use detectors so that they can be able to prevent attempts too take out books without registering them. The university library in Jonkoping is one of the libraries that have such a detector. But unfortunately it doesn?t always work correct and can also react on other things a part from books. This is a big problem since the library staff don?t have time to check all signals that comes from detector.

This analysis is about the fourth basic competence and how you can define it, what it includes and if it is possible to find it in the new curriculum for the Swedish high school; Gymnasiereformen -07. The analysis was focused on the following subjects; Mathematics, Social science and Swedish. The aim with this analysis has been to create a summary in the field of information literacy and to define the fourth basic competence. The analysis were focused on and delimited by the following conceptions; information literacy, digital competence and the information search process. The sources of information has primarily been taken from the field of information literacy and statements from professionals in the fields of information literacy and education.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to perform a user oriented evaluation of the International Library?s website. The questions posed in this study are; for what purpose do the users in this study turn to the International Library?s website; what does the users information searching process consist of when visiting the site; how does navigation, layout and content effect the users satisfaction with the website; do the users in this study consider that the International Library?s website can be improved and if so, how? The study was performed with a user oriented approach where six qualitative interviews with librarians who use the website were conducted. These interviews were analysed using Brenda Dervin?s Sense making-theory and Leclercq?s theory about user satisfaction.