The aim of this study has been to investigate actors? methods for acquiring information that is necessary for their profession, with a focus on the more random methods they might possibly use. The study is based on the following questions: What information needs do actors have in relation to their profession? Which methods do actors use to procure information? Which information systems do actors use? What role does the library play in the actors? acquisition of information? Through an interview study with 10 informants a picture is formed of the actors? information behavior. With the help of theoretical ideas regarding random methods of acquisition, we describe which information needs actors have and how they acquire that information.

The objective of this Bachelor?s thesis is to investigate how the public library in Luleå has set about implementing an alternative classification system for its children's books section and to explore why this was done. We wanted to investigate both how they have adapted the new system to the children's own way of seeking information and the library personnel's experience of using the new shelving system. We have done seven interviews to answer these questions and our choice of literature is intended to put the process of change into a wider context. The answers show that the library was dissatisfied with the former system and have instead expressed a desire to shift the focus of their classification system to their users.

We have carried out a study of a classification system for the Swedish collection at The Royal Library in Stockholm from 1887. It was printed in 50 copies. The constructor, Bernhard Lundstedt, and his colleagues used it as guidance in lack of a catalogue. We regard it a local classification system. Little research has been done on old classification systems, but Francis Miksa points out the importance of examining them.

This paper is about employees' opinion towards libraries. The target group consists of employees at industrial research institutes in Sweden. Libraries offer several more services today than they have done before. I think many people do not recognise all of them and I also think the knowledge and the opinion about libraries have to do with use of them. Since I am curious about if this is true or not the purpose of this essay is to find out, through an attitude research, the employees', at industrial research institutes, opinion about library service.

This essey discuss competence development for the employees in a unit of the Swedish police authorities. The purpose with this survey has been to show an understanding for how this unit within the Swedish police authorities works with competence development and what kind of competence investments they carry out and also why competence development is important in their organisation. To answer the purpose of the survey and the questions a qualitative method has been used remaining interviews with five involved respondents working in the investigated unit. The result shows that needs for competence development are made clear during meeting for personal development and during the local educational council inventories. Competence development for the employees is prioritated for the policemen comparing to the civil employees on account of that the policemen have a demanding work and they have to develop their work all the time because of the resisting circumstances.

Open source is growing outside the boundaries of hackers, amateurs and software development, creating a humongous potential in many different areas and aspects of society. The intrinsic and extrinsic motivations that drives open source have been in the subject of much research recently, but how they affect each other when paid and unpaid contributors come together is still hidden in obscurity. In this study I investigate how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation correlates with each other and how those correlations affect paid and unpaid open source software contributors. The literature synthesis is based on of systematic reviews through searches in library databases, identification of articles by searching on the Internet and by reading relevant books. My results indicate that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations continuously affect each other and that paid contributors are more vulnerable since their extrinsic motivation in terms of money is reached only when many other motivations are fulfilled.

 The aim of this two-years master?s thesis is to examine the role of the body and the importance of nonverbal communication in the library workplace and to explore the possibility of becoming more nonverbally skilled. For this purpose a course was developed and presented to nine librarians in a public library in the vicinity of Stockholm in February, 2011. Qualitative interviews with the librarians were conducted after the course.Important theories for this work were Annemaree Lloyd?s thoughts on corporeality, Erving Goffman?s dramaturgical sociology and John Dewey?s learning by doing.

The aim of this paper is to examine the youth library PUNKTmedis' work methods to adapt itself to the youth. Improved communication with this user group is the starting point for the new work methods. We have chosen to view the increased cooperation between the library and the youth as an adjustment to market demands. We have noticed the possible existence of an antagonism between on the one hand the traditional role of the public library of adult education and on the other hand an adjustment to the market demands. Adult education and the adjustment to market demands is seen as contributing to the image of PUNKTmedis.

The main purpose of this Master thesis is to illuminate the understanding of local politicians regarding the public libraries and the librarians. We argue that the local politicians´ opinions regarding public libraries and librarians influence the way they act and react in their roles as politicians.In order to achieve the aim of this thesis we focused on following questions:What are the opinions of the politicians:- regarding themselves in relation to the public library?- concerning public libraries in general and its functions especially in the municipalities of their own?- concerning the librarians and their work in a public function?What are the conclusions to be drawn regarding the politicians´ interest and commitment to public libraries in the politic daily-life of the municipalities? Our empiric material consists of qualitative interviews with six politicians elected in two municipalities in the interior of Västerbotten, a northern sparsely populated district. In order to distinguish the various opinions that emerge from the material, we apply a phenomenographic approach. The analysis result we present in three conceivable categories in order to express the different opinions.In general our study points at a positive and favourable attitude to the public library, and all the respondents assume that the municipality ought to offer this service.

In a web environment the library and the librarian continue to function in their role as information provider even when the physical library is closed. Research question is to describe how and in what extent the public libraries websites are integrated in their daily activity and what the causes are for that. The empirical material consists of a survey of number of public libraries websites and qualitative interviews with responsible librarians. I have delimited the study by only investigating the websites of Gothenburg public libraries. In my survey of the websites I have studied four spheres; Services, Contact, Structure and General viewpoints.

Principles that guide how a classification system should be structured have existed for more than a century. Traditional classification principles can be of great value for the design of classification schemes directories on the web. However, there are differences between the library context in which these principles originated, and the web. This thesis aims at investigating how changes in the context of classification affect the application of traditional principles of classification on the web. Another purpose is to see what implications this has for the design of classification schemes on the web.

The aim of this study is to describe how Swedish research librarians feel that their work has been affected by electronic journals. The study focuses on medical electronic journals accessed through consortia agreements via Bibsam, the Royal Librarys Department for National Co-ordination and Development. This thesis includes two main parts: a literature survey and an empirical study. The literature survey shows that since the 1990´s most research libraries are hybrid libraries including both printed and electronic information sources and that librarians tasks to seek and organize information have remained but the tools have changed. Qualitative interviews were performed with four librarians at two university libraries and one university college library on how their work with electronic journals differed from their work with printed journals, which new tasks the electronic journals have brought and which have disappeared and how the librarians professional role has been affected.

This master thesis is written in the purpose to discover which attitudes the public libraries in Sweden and Denmark have towards offering popular music to their patrons, how they motivates their choices and why they make the choices they make. The essay focuses on the differences and similarities between the Swedish and Danish libraries and relates their attitudes to the Finnish researcher Sanna Taljas three discourses regarding music policies in libraries.We examined this by sending out a question sheet to public libraries in Sweden and Denmark, the questions were regarding popular music's place in the library and how they build up their music collection. The question sheets were sent out to a total of 116 libraries of which 46 were Danish.The conclusions we drew after our examination were that Danish and Swedish public libraries have a lot in common in the way they regard and distribute popular music in the public libraries. Both of the respondent groups puts user demand high on the priority list as well as having a collection that holds significant works of many genres..

The concept of sustainable development is a challenge that demands cooperation from all levels of society for it to be successful. The focus for this thesis is how politicians within the local councils understand the concept of sustainable development and how they implement it in political decision-making.The basis for the study is a questionnaire that was distributed to 303 local politicians in three municipalities of varying size in Southern Sweden. The study concentrates on departments within the local councils that are directly connected to the Swedish environmental law and the Swedish planning and construction law. One of the primary goals with the aforementioned laws is the achievement of sustainable development within one generation.The outcome of the study was that over half of the local politicians could correctly define sustainable development according to the World Commission on Environment and Development?s (WCED) definition.

The explosion of information technology has given users direct access to an ocean of information. Increased availability puts increasing demands on the ability of students and researchers to search for, filter, and structure information. In response, the role of the research library has shifted from being primarily an information resource to being an educational resource with a focus on teaching users what is known as information literacy. This thesis is a study of user-education at the Karolinska Institute Library KIB, the largest medical library in the Nordic countries. KIB has invested significant resources in developing user-education, and has a full-time user-education developer and a formal pedagogical platform for user-education.