Libraries all over the world struggle against the threat of decreased funding and a lack of governmental interest. In countries with an under-developed library sector the interest from the government is often minimal or non-existent. Since the 80´s Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency has contributed to the library development in Central America through the Royal Library of Sweden. Nicaragua was the first country to be counterpart in the project. For a period of eight weeks I have completed a field study in Nicaragua and visited the National Library Rubén Darío and public libraries in the country.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the accessibility and barriers of public libraries to intellectual and mentally disabled children and young people. This we will do by examining whether the library staff acts according to policies of the libraries. Our method has been qualitative interviews with library staff and we have also observed the environment, media and marketing of these libraries. As a theoretical starting point of the analysis we use Michael Buckland?s different aspects of access to information.

The public library is an institution that throughout history has been associated with anumber of social codes, that seem to be deeply rooted in the minds of the public. Thesecodes regulates how users act and interact in the library environment and as a library useryou have to obtain knowledge about these social codes.This master's thesis aims at studying how these codes are transferred to children in the earlyschool-age, how children react to the social codes and what effects they have on thechildren's development into library users.The empirical material used in this study consists of observations and interviews. Theobservations are conducted during two school classes visits to a public library and focuseson the interaction between librarians, the children and their teachers, and the interviewswere conducted with the two librarians responsible for the library visits.The theories used in this master's thesis consists of symbolic interactionism, in the form oftheories by George Herbert Mead and Erving Goffman, Peter L. Berger and ThomasLuckmanns theories regarding the concept of institutions. Another theory that's used in thismaster's thesis is the one concerning the social aspects of information literacy focusing onthe concept of epistemic communities as presented by Kimmo Tuominen, Reijo Savolainenand Sanna Talja.The result of this study is that the social codes are communicated to the children primarilyby the teachers rather than the librarians.

This Master's thesis aims to investigate librarians' identity construction through the study of their narratives about themselves and their lives. We want to understand in what way the education in Library- and Information science contributes to shape the students professional identity and how these identities then continue to be transformed when they enter their professional lives. We assert that this construction of identity takes place through socialisation. We start with the reference work because we think this is a central part of librarians' tasks. Our theoretical starting point is constructionism, we mean that professional identity is a social construction that continuously is formed and transformed.We interviewed six former students at Library- and Information science at Lund University.

This paper aims to analyze how preservation of and access to old and rare book collections are organized in public libraries in Serbia. The paper is based on an analysis of documents, a survey and qualitative interviews with librarians in Belgrade and Novi Sad. Serbia is a country that has experienced violent historical periods with far-reaching consequences for its old and rare book collections. The interpretative background refers to documents about cultural policy in Europe and in Serbia. Serbia is a country in transition which aims to join the European Union.

This essay investigates the psychological aspects in students' experiences of their university library and the information seeking process. Focus of the investigation is library anxiety, a kind of fear towards the university library with cognitive, affective and behavioural aspects. Twenty students at Uppsala university, who was about to conclude or recently have concluded an academic essay, were interviewed about their experiences of the university library, Carolina Rediviva. Five respondents stated experiences of fear, anxiety and apprehension in the library and it is on these informants that the greater part of the analysis and discussion draws. The essay suggests a model of library anxiety where outer environmental aspects of the library, such as the library environment, roles and routines of the library and library staff, interacts with inner personal aspects of the individual such as personal experiences, intellectual capacity and sensitivity to stress and anxiety.

The purpose with this study is to examine school-leaders?, school-librarians? and teachers? expectations and aims for their school-libraries at two different schools in the city of Växjö. The study is based on these five questions:· How do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers think about learning?· What function does the school-library have?· What roles do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers have in the school-library?· How do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers experience the co-operation in the school-library?· How would school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers wish that the co-operation should be?To be able to answer these questions I have done thirteen qualitative interviews and studied literature relevant to the subject. Three different theories are used as a theoretical framework; the traditional perspective, individual constructivism and social constructivism.

The focus of this master thesis is the library politics of the French Right wing party the National Front and the debate that followed the application of this politics. This qualitative study is divided into two parts where the critics to this politics represents one side and the adherents the other. The critics are composed by representatives from the French, Swedish and ? to some extent ? international library sector, while the adherent side is made up of politicians from the National Front and their adherents. The empiric material mostly consists of articles published in library, Right wing and daily press.

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.

This paper is a study of Vadstena monastery's book acquisitions and book collection 1374-1595. Studying catalogue descriptions of manuscripts and incunabula in Uppsala University library, the author has aimed to examine the development over a period of time, concentrating on way and place of acquisition, and desired types of texts.A short description and history of the monastery and its library is given. The study opens with the author stating there must have existed a plan for the book acquisitions and collection. A survey investigation shows, that the usable material is too small and somewhat nonrepresenta­tive of the monastery library to form a basis for a fair analysis. Further investigations give material to form a basis for some careful statements, saying that book production and also acquisitions concentrated on sermons literature, and that this type dominated the library collection throughout the time of development, followed by the philosophical-theological university literature..

The purpose of this study was to find out what kind of fiction 120 borrowers at Sundbyberg'stown library borrow and how they obtain information about the existence of the books theywant to borrow.I have carried out an inquiry among those visiting the fiction area of the library and alsointerviewed three librarians. To be able to compare my results with other more extensivesurveys, I have studied some literature about, e.g. reading and library habits. Furthermore, Ihave read articles about fiction at libraries and culture politics. I came to the conclusion thatcrime novels are the most popular kind of fiction whereas science fiction and fantasy fictionare the least popular ones.

BarnOPAC is a Swedish library interface for children. It was launched in public libraries in Sweden in 2001 and has now become a part of library software equipment in several public libraries. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the interface BarnOPAC on the basis of the childrens perspective. The questions raised consider: how children experience and handle this interface, how library staff experience it and what viewpoints librarians have on childrens use of it. For this purpose we implemented a user study including eight children using the interface in a school library.

The aim of this two years master thesis in Library and Information Science is to examine how librarians and library managers in the three Stockholm suburbs of Alby, Fisksätra and Rinkeby think and reason about the role of public libraries in the integration process. The aim is also to examine whether their perception differ from that of local politicians at the municipal level. The theoretical framework is Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hanses model for analysis of the local library profile, and Jose Alberto Diaz theory on the integration process. The method used is qualitative interviews. The interviews were recorded and the content was analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The results of this study show that the library services in the three suburbs, rather than being stipulated by the legal demand for special services towards immigrants, are based on the needs of the local population.

This user study was carried out at the library at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg in the spring of 1999. Chalmers wanted to investigate how much their employees use electronic journals. To facilitate decision-making and be cost effective, the library needed to know about their customers' opinions. The main purpose was to investigate the usage of electronic journals, how the library's choice of these journals affects the frequency of use and what the attitudes towards them are. A questionnaire was sent out to 2 400 employees; 477 replies were received.

The aim of the thesis is to study young peoples, defined as boys and girls between 14 and 16 years old, attitudes to library in two municipalities. Notwithstanding the fact that young people, and children, often is given priority in library work, the reality often seems to be another. Attitudes are founded primarily in childhood and therefore it is of great importance to examine how young people regard libraries. Besides studying former research about young people and libraries that has been performed on library and information science, we also have been using concepts and theories from social science. We give a brief outline of youth research and its development and look at official records and legislation to see if and in what context young people are mentioned.