The aim of the paper is to examine how public libraries can develop their services for children with ethnic minority backgrounds as a user group. This is achieved through studying the conditions for library services provided for children aged 9-12 in this group by public libraries in suburbs densely populated with ethnic minorities. The paper uses both a literature review and empirical research on the community libraries in Rinkeby and Rosengård as well as the town library in Lund. Services potentially available to these groups are analysed and discussed in the later chapters. The overall conclusion is that those services provided for ethnic minority children are largely the same as those provided for in children library services in general.

My master?s thesis is a study of acquisition of photographies during 1958-2008. The questions I proceed from is what patterns lies behind the Royal library's acquisition of photography and how the process of acquisition looks like. The theoretical base which I lean on consists partly of a problematization of the process of cultural heritage and partly of organizational theory. The problematization of the process of cultural heritage is my foundation of this essay.

The purpose of this study has been to examine reading habits and the use of the library by pre­school teachers in a mainly multicultural community, and also explore to what extent activities in the local library are aimed at preschoolers.The study used a sociocultural approach based on Vygotsky?s theories of learning and development and Söderbergh?s theory of early childhood language development, and was carried out during the summer 2009. The methodology used was both quantitative and qualitative, with a combination of questionnaires and interviews. Questionnaires were sent out to each section of the municipal pre­schools within the catchments area of the local public library in a multicultural suburb of Uppsala. Three short interviews were carried out with staff at the local and main library branches, as well as library staff at the County Council.The results show that, although preschool teachers find reading important in their work, many teachers read spontaneously and/or sporadically.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate children?s access to specific children?s activities at Swedish public libraries 2005. The thesis is based on literature studies and qualitative interviews with children?s librarians, library directors and local politicians at two demographically different libraries in Gothenburg.The sub questions are: What measures exist to promote children?s access to public libraries and children?s activities when it comes to: law and other political statements: different efforts on the state level and different efforts on the municipal level in the direct activity with children at public libraries? What driving forces and needs justify activities for children at public libraries? How will the responsible persons judge that the efforts are sufficient? The result of the study shows that children?s access to library activity has increased in the last couple of years due to reorganization, economic savings with closing down of library affiliates and because libraries have given priority to other things, like IT and new media. Children?s librarians have got new assignments and less time for children?s activity.The conclusion of our investigation is that children?s librarians are ambitious in their work, but unfortunately don?t give children?s library activity adequate resources.

The objective of this entire essay, founded on nineteen interviews of poetry readers at thepublic library in Borås, is to ascertain why people do read poetry. But in addition to examinewhat sort of people who enjoy poetry, as well as what they appear to get out of their exercise.I have also put together the position of the poetry reader as a customer of the library.The summary of contents is primarily based on direct quotations of the interviews, and doesnot reflect any generally applicable facts about poetry readers. I am only trying to focus on thethoughts and sentiments on poetry experienced by a few randomly selected individuals. DanAndersson, Karin Boye, Nils Ferlin and Gustaf Fröding were stated as favourites by many.The only thing in common subsequently found by those interviewed was a great affection forliterature and a diligent usage of the library..

The purpose of this thesis is to create conditions in order to plan lighting to a library room after children's needs and wishes, and to gain deeper knowledge about how children experience different lighting environments and what they perceive as good lighting. I was given the task by Huskvarna library to design a lighting plan for their children's department. This is part of the project "Library 2.1-room as a medium" that is going on at Huskvarna library since fall 2007. My questions at issue are: 1. What do children consider as good lighting in a library? 2.

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.

AbstractAttitudes towards the reference situation and the meetings between library users and librarians have become the subject of much debate in the library setting today. The aim of this two years master´s thesis has been to examine six librarian?s attitudes and apprehensions concerning the interactions between the librarian and the users in the library setting. We were also interested in knowing how a library can work to become more service oriented and customer centred. We conducted six interviews with librarians located at three different libraries in Sweden.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate how librarians approach to the multicultural collection development and which methods they use in providing library materials in minority languages. The questions to be answered are: which methods the libraries use when purchasing library materials in minority languages, how the respondents experience that the minority user groups needs are met in the library and how the multicultural competence of the staff is used in the libraries. For this purpose the qualitative interviews with 6 librarians in Gothenburg are conducted, mainly from the libraries in the immigrant-dense parts of the city, while the study being concentrated on 6 language groups of library users. The study?s theoretical framework is based on theories of multiculturalism, culture, identity and bilingualism.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to investigate a possible connection between the development of mobile library services in Sweden and the development of cultural policy during 1945-2006. Our main question is: is there a connection between the development of the mobile library services in Sweden, as described in Biblioteksbladet, and the development of cultural policy as portrayed by Anders Frenander and Dorte Skot-Hansen? In order to answer this question, we formulated two secondary questions: - How are the mobile library services described in Biblioteksbladet between 1945 and 2006? - Are there any similarities or dissimilarities between the development of the mobile library services and the development cultural policy as described in our theoretical models? If so, in what way? Our study covers the entire time period since the start of the mobile library services in Sweden in the late 1940s. The final year for our investigation is 2006.

The objective of the study is to map the cognitive structure of Library and Information Science, using a quantitative, bibliometric method. This empirical study shows how co-citation analysis combined with word-frequency analysis can be used to describe the subject content of the field. The research questions to be answered are: -Which clusters of authors can be identified? -How can these clusters be described in respect of their subject content, if the descriptors associated with the authors in the clusters are counted? The results show that the cognitive structure of Library and Information Science can be described by 13 clusters of authors, where each cluster is representing a specific aspect of the subject- domain. For the description of the subject content of the clusters, descriptors DE of the LISA database have been used..

During my time as a student at the School of Library and Information Science in Borås there was an ongoing discussion regarding whether or not the library and librarian were facing an identity crisis and what future consequences this may lead to. The discussion was and still is of interest to me since it most likely will have an impact on the identity I soon will make part of my self as a professional librarian. This master?s thesis is an attempt that to through discourse analysis seek clarity in what the future identity of the library and the librarian may consist of. I do so by examining articles from the two library journals Ikoner and Biblioteksbladet.

The aim of this master thesis has been to investigate discussions about public access to Internet in public libraries. Areas of interest were the debate in Sweden as well as in the United States. The approach was qualitative and questionnaires were distributed by e-mail to a number of Swedish public libraries. The results from the survey were then supplemented with a theoretical background and a literature study. The usable questionnaires obtained from 20 libraries showed a rather uniform approach among the Swedish librarians of how the Internet is best provided by public libraries.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the user discourses that can be identified in the public library field. Questions posed in this study are: what discourses can be found, what characterises them, how are users categorised and what does this categorisation imply. The theoretical starting-point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. The method is text analytic. 62 articles from three library journals - Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle and Ikoner are analysed through a model in four phases.

The usability of the Internet increases for every year. The Weblog phenomenon makes it possible for anyone to easily publish, find information and get in touch with other people through the net. This Essay treats the possibilities the Weblog medium offer Swedish libraries and librarians in library contexts. The purpose of the study is to examine the Web phenomenon: Weblogs, and their significance for a total of eleven Library Heads and librarians together with their view on the Weblog activity at each library connected Weblog, to get comprehension and new knowledge on the usability of Weblogs in the library sector. The foundation for the Essay consists of a qualitative interview study, built on asynchronous e-mail interviews and telephone interviews with blogging librarians and Heads of libraries.