This thesis examines how library employees experience the library as a meeting place. Our questions are: What effect has the concept of a "library as a meeting-place" for library staff?How do they see the library as a meeting place? How do they see their workplace as a venue for meetings? The respondents interviewed work in public libraries. We were inspired by a cultural geographic theory that we re-designed. The following divisions were made in order to give the work a definitive structure:The "mental space"The library as a meeting place on a global and universal level;The "conceived space"Librarians and planners' thinking on the specific library as a meeting place;The "living space"How library staff perceive that the library is used as a meeting place in reality.In our analysis, we use a phenomenographic qualitative interpretive methodology.

The structure of the Swedish public library field has been evolving during the last decades. The traditional mission of educating the citizens to become responsible, democratic and knowledgeable members of society has in a way led to the integration between public and school libraries. Lately new co-operational models have been under debate and a sense of resistance has arisen because of the economical and market influences. In parallel with closure of library branches new libraries have evolved in malls and wash houses and some with self-service with no use of librarians. This work shows how co-operation in rural areas finds the common goals for the people living there who are concerned about keeping the service needed including the public library and thus using existing means and crossing borders of commercial thinking.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the development of the public library in the district of Österåker during a period of 1958-1983. The main goals have been to identify the crucial events in the history of the library within their historical context and to analyse the factors that have been important for the development: financing, location, staffing, stock of books, book-lending level and different activities for children, youngsters and adults. The consideration has been taken to reasons and consequences of these events. The hermeneutic interpretation model of interaction between parts and wholes, between reasons and results is the basic method in this research which leans mainly upon local archives in Österåker. The public library in Österåker was established in 1952 as a fusion of previously existing small libraries: the parish library in Östra Ryd, the Labour Movement?s library and the temperance movement?s library.

The aim of this thesis is to study the effects of self-service on professional qualifications of library assistants in three public libraries in Sweden. The research questions are: - How do the library assistants experience that their professional qualifications have changed since self-service was introduced at the library? - Does the view on library assistants? professional qualifications and future differ between library managers and library assistants? - Does the view on library assistants? professional qualifications and future differ between the three different libraries? The method used is qualitative interviews with six library assistants and three head of libraries from three different public libraries. The theoretical framework for this study is constructed by theoretical ideas about professional qualifications and technology's impact on professionalism. The results indicate that the cognitive qualifications of library assistants have increased and social qualifications both increased and decreased.

The purpose of this paper is to describe methods to computerize a library and to compare theory with a process in a school library. The case study is based on a school library called Sunnerbogymnasiet which is situated in Ljungby. My questions are;- Which methods are parts of the process to computerize a library?- Which methods are used in the process in Sunnerbogymnasiet?- What does the practical process look like compared to the methods described in theory?In the paper I present the methods in the process according to the studied literature and compare these with a process at Sunnerbogymnasiet. The most significant result is that cooperation between the school library and the community library was the most important reason for the choice of library computer system.

This is a two years master?s thesis that studies five libraries. The purpose with the paper was to look at a specific material and study how it expresses itself around the architecture of the buildings, an if the descriptions were different depending on the library, public library or university library. The conclusion is that the ways of describing the library buildings have varied; depending on one part time and one part evolution. The way library buildings look and have been used has changed over time also, and as well how people perceive and talk, or in this case write about them..

The purpose of this Masters thesis has been to study the changes made in shelf arrangement and library environment in a Swedish public library. The aim was to examine the reasoning done by the library staff regarding classification, the Swedish classification system SAB and changes in library environment. The basis of our study were three questions: 1. Why has Västervik public library made changes in the shelf arrangement? 2.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to describe the expansion of Sundbyberg public library during the decade 1954 to 1964. Our focus of interest is the library?s concentration on public relations in 1954.During the experimental year 1954 a public relations librarian, Bianca Bianchini, was employed. Her task was to introduce thelibrary to the citizens of Sundyberg who were not already using it. As a background to this concentration on public relations we also describe the early development of the public library in Sundbyberg.

This Master?s thesis is the first to quantitatively study the prevalence of library anxiety at a Swedish university. Library anxiety is a concept describing the negative feelings students can experience when using the library. The study was conducted using web questionnaires sent out to 512 students at Växjö university. 38 % responded and the results were analysed with the help of, amongst other methods, correlation studies.

Today, one of the foremost tools used by the library staff is the library catalogue search tools. It has come to our understanding that some library staff are dissatisfied with how the search tools works. The aim of this study is to illuminate the library staff's negative experiences of the search tools, and to present a basis for future discussion and development. To our help we have used a quantitative survey which were sent to library staff that used one of the two largest integrated library systems in Sweden, BOOK-IT and Mikromarc. The questions regarded the library staff's perception of a number of features in the search tools.

The purpose of this thesis is to explore the experiences and views some users have of the library environment and services of the University Library of Halmstad. The main question to be answered in this thesis is what importance the users attribute to the library environment and services while pursuing their most recent library errand. To answer this question a study of relevant literature on the subjects of library environment, library services and user-surveys in other academic libraries was carried out and a questionnaire was distributed to 22 respondents in the process of visiting the University of Halmstad Library. The literature background and the results of the conducted study were interpreted and discussed and led to the following conclusions: 3 respondents encounters with the library environment and its services were negative in part and thus their experiences and views were relevant to the completion of their library errands. The other respondents? encounters confirmed their overall positive earlier experiences and views of the library environment and its services, but had no real concrete significance for the completion of their library errands..

The aim of this paper is to examine how dyslectic adults define the service quality at the public library of Gothenburg. The purpose is also to investigate what level of service quality the library provides and which responsibilities the library has towards the dyslectics. Answers are sought to the following questions: - How do dyslectics perceive the service quality at the public library of Gothenburg and is that service quality satisfactory? - What responsibilities does the public library of Gothenburg have towards the dyslectics according to cultural policy documents? In this paper six persons have been interviewed. Of these, four are adult dyslectics, one works with people with special demands and the last one is the chief librarian.

The aim of this study is to understand how the library environment affects the experiences and feelings of public library users. In order to concretise this, the study sets out from the public library in Bollebygd. We wanted to find out how the library users experience the library environment. Does the library environment affect the meeting between library users? How does the environment affect their moving patterns inside the library? Which environmental factors influence the users' experiences? Our questions were: how do users experience the library environment - as a mediating space for information and culture? - as a social room and meeting place? The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists of qualitative observations and interviews, and literature studies.

In this Masters thesis the image of the public library in the local press and in the eyes of the public is examined. The questions posed to examine this are: - What activities of the public library are described in the local press? - What activities does the public associate with the public library? - What functions and roles of the public library can be found in the articles and interviews and how are they expressed? - What opinions of the public library and hereto related activities can be found in the articles and interviews? This study is based on an analysis of 127 articles, published in Borås Tidning during a period of six months, and of interviews with 35 people from Sjuhäradsbygden. To analyse the articles and the interviews Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen´s model of roles for the library has been used. The model includes four roles for the library: the library as a cultural centre, a knowledge centre, an information centre and a social centre.

The purpose of this study is to examine the phenomenon ?Living library?, where people are lent out instead of books. First it is looked into what the Living library means to the person who is borrowing a living book and what it means to the living book itself. Than the Living library is put in a public library context. This is done through a case study of the city library of Helsingborg and the city library of Malmö.