The question whether controlled vocabulary or natural language free-text terms is the most effective search strategy has occupied researchers in LIS for many decades. This Masters thesis is an empirical study which aims to compare these two search strategies in LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts, an online bibliographic database. 22 topics from the discipline of Library and Information Science were constructed and out of each topic one query for each search strategy was formed. Queries in natural language were formed with terms from different sources, for example dictionaries, while queries in controlled vocabulary were built with terms from LISAs electronic thesaurus. The measures used in this study were precision, relative recall pooling method and overlap.

könlitteratur: Bella och AIS.

This thesis is a discourse analysis analyzing public library librarians' talk on the subject of public library meeting places. Within the field of Library and Information Science the public libraries' functions as social meeting places have been scrutinized for more than a decade. Researchers in the Nordic countries in particular have looked at library users' use of the library space and have highlighted the sociologic dimensions of the public library and the meeting place functions. Few however have paid much attention to the library personnel's point of view. The discourse analysis perspective is about language use and how people construct the reality.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to, from a users perspective, investigate which factors affect the library use for six persons with disabilities or visual handicaps. My method has been a case study and the methods applied are interviews and observation. As a theoretical framework I use Tom Wilsons theories and models about information behaviour and transform them to a model about library use. Answers are sought to the following questions: - What does the library use look like for six persons with disabilities or visually handicaps? - How do they experience the library in their own municipality? - Which factors affect the disabled persons library use and experience of the library? All interviewees showed a very positive attitude towards the library and the majority of them visited the library regularly or received audio books by mail.

This Masters thesis concerns difficulties experienced by Gender Studies researchers in an information seeking context. The aim is to identify, and study the cause of, these potential difficulties by asking the following questions: How do researchers in Gender Studies seek information? What difficulties may arise when information seeking is carried out in Gender Studies? What may be the cause of these difficulties? What does Gender Studies consist of? In order to find feasible answers to these questions, particular attention is paid to the context in which the researchers exist and work. The database KVINNSAM serves as an example of how libraries have tried to overcome barriers in information seeking in Gender Studies. The method used is a qualitative one based on interviews and literature studies.

This thesis is about School libraries and the honour "School library of the year". I have examined the questions - Whats to say about school libraries in the curriculum and the library law? - Who administer the honour "School library of the year" and whats demanded to get it? - What have made the school libraries I have examined to school libraries of the year"? As theory I have used the Taxonomies of the School Library Media Program by David V. Loertscher. I have given a background to and defined the school library as a function, a room and in the teaching among others.

This masters thesis aims to investigate how upper secondary school pupils experience their information seeking in a school context without access to a school library. It is the pupils own thoughts and opinions about information seeking and criticism of the sources that is the main focus. The literature that has been used consists of material from research concerning youth and different aspects of information seeking such as the information seeking process, information seeking on the web, criticism of the sources and how pupils interact with other people in order to acquire information. The method that has been used is group interviews. Twelve pupils from an independent school without access to a school library have been interviewed in groups of three.

This is a master thesis about the reconstruction of Bibliotheca Alexandrina. With a hermeutical approach utilizing literature review and interviews it examines how the library have come into existence, and what the Swedish efforts have been to help the project along. Using a mainly structural perspective, the major factors examined are world politics, Egyptian society and library values. The conclusion is that myths about the ancient library of Alexandria, the city of Alexandria itself, world politics, a more stable Egyptian society, improved world and Egyptian economy, an improved Egyptian reverence for reading and writing, less censorship, more freedom of speech and Egyptian national pride all have contributed to new library. Swedish efforts by Sida, the Swedish Institute in Alexandria, FAV and SWEBA have mainly been in the areas of information technology, education of Egyptian library staff and childrens literature..

The purpose of this paper is to examine different attitudes regarding freedom of information and how libraries should fulfil their information-task represented by four organisations. The organisations are important in shaping the Swedish public libraries in different ways. The purpose is to examine in what ways their definition of information freedom may differ from one another and what that means in defining the public library. For the survey the qualitative textual analysis has been used for examining the documents and websites that are part of the debate about the public library and information freedom. We chose to interview representatives of four organisations that in different ways influence the shaping of the public library.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to study students perception of the services that the library staff provides and the library staffs opinion of the students perceptions. With the concept service we mean the treatment, the attitudes and the qualities that exist between the library staff and their users. Our purpose is also to examine how the users experienced services quality. Our survey was conducted at an academic library with questionnaires to both students and library staff. We analysed the result of the survey by using three theories by Lundmark, Keen and Grönroos and Monthelie.

The aim of this study was to map the intellectual base at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS) at the University Collage of Borås, and to compare this intellectual base to the intellectual base of the research area Library and Information Science. This was done by analysing the citations in publications published, between the year of 2001 to the first quarter of 2006, by researchers at the institution, using the technique of author cocitation analysis. Cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling, statistical techniques that are traditional i the author cocitation analysis, formed an objective map of the intellectual base at the SSLIS. This map was then compared with three prior studies, that used the same technique to map the intellectual base of the research area. The result shows that the map of the intellectual base at the SSLIS consists of the specialities: user studies, library studies, culture/cultural policy, information retrieval, bibliometrics and information in organisations.

This thesis discusses and analyses the existence of two different perspectives, a social and a technical one, in Library and Information Science (LIS). Most of the time the division between these perspectives seems to result in research only using either of them. This can be a problem when studying complex phenomena. We therefore see a need for a metatheory that unites the social and the technical. By presenting and analysing all doctoral dissertations published at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science (SSLIS) 1993-2005, we try to detect and critically discuss the dichotomy between the two perspectives.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the female reader of science fiction literature, a genre by tradition dominated by men. Through qualitative interviews with seven female science fiction readers, the relation between the reading and the readers? lives, as well as their concepts of the science fiction genre and the community of science fiction readers, was examined. The main theoretical framework used for the analysis was Yvonne Hirdman?s gender theory, Judith Butler?s concept of identity and Louise M.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine public library and information technology IT discourses to see which relationships are established between them in four library journals. This is done in two steps, where first discourses are defined followed by an analysis of the relationships established between the public library and IT in each discourse. The questions from which the analysis emanates are as follows: What discourses exist around the public library and IT in the library journals? What conceptions of the tasks of the public library are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the tasks of IT are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the relationships between the public library and IT are constructed in the discourses? The theoretical and methodological starting-points are found in Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. 37 articles from four library journals Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle, DIK-forum and Ikoner - are analysed through a model in five phases.

This paper deals with how science teachers in the Swedish secondary school choose the content in the education they give to the pupils. What are the reasons for their choices and what do they think of the purpose of science in secondary school? Through interviewing science teachers the investigation shows that there are three different views of how to choose content in the science education: one focuses on the processes of science itself, one integrates the socio-cultural aspects and one emphasizes the interests of the pupils.