The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the information needs of gay, lesbian and bisexual adolescents? when they are coming out. I also examine what kind of information they seek and where they might find this information. The purpose is also to examine what role the public or school library plays. The study is conducted through qualitative interviews with gay, lesbian and bisexual adolescents?.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate if there are environments that use some kind of central authentication system within institutions/schools. The hypothesis is that an institution not using a form of central authentication service has more need for maintenance and as such is considered a higher cost for the organization. The gathering of data has been done through interviews with technical personal at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola and Linköpings Universitet. Based on the technical background of the authors, and the system limited to discussing Windows and UNIX operating systems, a discussion and analysis of the systems working today has been done, with emphasize on the hypothesis..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how semantic relations in a document collection can be visualized with a Kohonen self-organizing map. It can be seen as a map of the information space which can be used to support information retrieval. The study makes a comparison of the possible differences between a map that is based on morphologically unprocessed text and a map where the text has been lemmatized. The text that is being processed is the definitions of all the existing instances in WordNet of a random selection of indexing terms from the Times-collection. The purpose is to see if morphological processing somehow can show different semantic connections between term instances based on their definitions.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate if the library can be a real partner for researchers in managing and dealing with their research information. In this study, six researchers have been interviewed about their problems with information management. This study uses the method Critical Incident Technique for the interviews with the researchers. This method focuses mainly on problems and what happens around those problems.

The purpose of this essay is to find an answer to whether the methodology used by the Naturskolan conduces to learning and also if the Naturskolan, as a method of its own, leads to an increased interest in natural science for the pupils participating in the classes at the Naturskolan.The method which has been used to reach the results of the study is a quantitative opinion poll. The results reached through the study has been compared to previous research in the subject. Deeper studies were made to examine however the interest of the pupils was influenced by their visit at the Naturskolan.The results of the study show an increase of interest in natural science after visiting the Naturskolan. It also shows that the teachers? interest in natural science and outdoor pedagogy has increased by the visit at the Naturskolan.Through this study we came to the conclusion that the Naturskolan is a good method to learning..

AbstractThis study deals with NTA in preschool and the purpose of the study is to find out how the NTA project works out in practice. In the empirical study I have used questionnaires as a research method (Trost2001). Questionnaires have been sent to preschool teachers in the whole of Sweden to get as good a selection as possible. The responses received have been processed and analyzed. The results are reported below.The majority of the teachers thought it worked well to work with the NTA.

The study set out to find how artists organize and use their personal collections from a Personal Information Management (PIM) perspective, and how that use affects their practice and their art production. A secondary object of the study was to articulate the ways that personal collections are utilized as tools by creative users.  The empirical data consisted of five qualitative, semi-structured interviews with Swedish and Norwegian sound artists. The constant comparative method was used for analysis, and Activity Theory was used as a theore- tical framework for the study. The study concluded that artists? personal collections, while diverse in content and structure, serve the same functions as tools in creative processes, and that attention to the uses of personal collections highlight needs that could be better met by integrated PIM-functionality.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how disabled people who receive the shut-in-service in one community define service quality. The purpose is also to examine the shut-in-service and to look at the users' context. Answers are sought to the following questions: - How do users experience the service quality of the shut-in-service? - What kind of service does the shut-in-service offer to the user? - How can the user be described and which are his/her requests? The analysis is based on theory about service quality by Christian Grönroos. The theory makes a distinction between two kinds of service quality, technical vs functional quality, as experienced by the user through the profile of the organization.

The major aim of the thesis is to describe the networks, relations and marketing of some university libraries and their customers in the year 2000. I illustrate how these issues interact and whether they have changed due to the recent development of technology and if so, how. The thesis is based on interviews with two directors of libraries and two librarians at two different libraries. A small survey with 16 questionnaires has also been performed in order to get a more general view on librarians' opinions in these questions. The thesis mainly shows that the networks in which the respondents take part primarily exist in the library sphere and towards the universities.

This thesis investigates the situation for comics in Swedish public libraries. The main questions is separated into two groups, the first dealing with the physical situation were we investigate placement, cataloguing and shelf arrangement. The second deals with the librarians attitudes towards comics and how they may affect their work. The base for this thesis is the idea that the comic medium may sometimes be treated different than the rest of the libraries collections. Because of this, a theoretical basis is developed which focus on different views on comics.

TitleSystems, Stability and Power. The Discourse of Information in Organizing Knowledge.AbstractThe aim of this Master's thesis is to inquire into the consequences of an unequal distribution of power between information discourses in the field of knowledge organisation. A deconstruction of Jennifer Rowley's and John Farrows introductory textbook Organizing Knowledge from 2000 is related to the major discourses of information in LIS. Questions posed in this study are: What meaning is ascribed to information in the material studied? Which information discourses are given a dominant position? Which are excluded? and: How does this affect the construction of the library and information science student's identity, in relation to practices of knowledge organisation? The theoretical framework is provided by Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's theory of discourse and combined with techniques for text analysis originating from the work of Norman Fairclough.The analysis reveals a strong domination of a cognitive discourse of information that underlines the importance of information systems for the organisation of knowledge.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the experience of art students and their attitudes and use of information during the last years of their Master?s degree. I also examine their opinions about the art education in general. The theoretical framework encompasses a sociocultural approach within the field of psychology-pedagogy and library- as well as information science. The empirical material has been collected through qualitative interviews with seven students studying at an art school in Sweden.

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.

AbstractIn the paper, democracy's development and change are studied in Swedish textbooks related to social science. The study?s starting point is that the picture of democracy provided to students has changed over time. The study aims to see how the view on democracy has altered in Swedish textbooks in social science. In order to examine this, I have studied seven textbooks, from 1945 to 2006, in social science.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine if and how bibliotherapy can be part of ordinary work in Swedish libraries. Questions: what is bibliotherapy and who can work with it? What are the conditions required? What does it mean to people taking part and to libraries? In this study bibliotherapy is delimited to fiction and activities including discussions, excluded are self-help books and the individuals private reading. The study is based on four qualitative interviews with librarian and bibliotherapists in Kirklees, England, partaking in nine bibliotherapeutic sessions and a literary survey, together forming a case-study. Conclusions: There is not a single answer to the question what bibliotherapy is, but if one puts stress on the biblio- part of the word, seeing reading as a normal activity it can be part of library work, whereas the therapy- part should be dealt with by professionals outside libraries.