The aim of this master thesis was to examine the European Commission's information resources from a user perspective in order to clarify the needs and circumstances of the search of EU-information among students at Örebro University. 41 students participated in a survey, and four of them was interviewed. On the basis of Pendelton- and Chatmans theories of information behaviour in small worlds, it were assumed that the students' education and citizenship in the European Union affected their needs and the search of EU information.The study showed that the students needs for EU-related information has increased, with the current education, but also been linked to earlier educations. The students Citizens need were mainly associated with elections such as the EMU-election, but also in some cases to a need of the general knowledge.A review of the European Commission's information resources were made with an emphasis on European Documentation Centre, EDC. The survey showed that most students used the EDC and the EU-databases that was made available by the European Commission through the EDC and the university library but were not aware that they used EDC.The survey also showed that students made use of familiar sources and resources when they searched the EU-information, such as the library's regular database list, the library catalogue and search engine on the internet are not requested of other resources.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness on the European Unions official website EUROPA, depending on which language is used to formulate the search question. Our main concern were if you get access to the same information depending on which language is used to search information The European Union has so far eleven official languages, and with the forthcoming expansion with negotiations with thirteen new countries to affiliate to the union by May 1:st 2004, the official languages will be even more. We have made a comparison between Swedish and English, using 29 different topics from which we formulated 2x29 queries. The topics used were found at the Swedish Governments FAQ about the European Union, EUsvar. We wanted the topics to be as authentic as possible to avoid bias.

The issue of using citation based indicators in the evaluation of science is widely discussed. Only recently did bibliometric indicators become one out of many means for the allocation of financial resources for scientific research at Swedish universities. The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the issue of using citations when evaluating science. The author studied the issue from the perspective of citers? motives.

The purpose with this study is to examine what kind of support there is for school libraries at the selected independent upper secondary schools and how these schools ensure that libraryservices is available to their students and their teachers. The purpose is also to examine what attitudes the administrators of the schools have to school libraries and teaching in information seeking. A qualitative method with interviews was used to fulfil the purpose. As a theoretical basis of the study Loertschers taxonomies of the school library media program and Limbergs three levels of pedagogic research were used and the interviews were analysed with these two theoretical frameworks as a background. The result of the study showed that neither one of the three examinated schools has a school library which means that they use the public library instead.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine how librarians/cultural workers act in projects in order to stimulate and promote reading among children and youth in sparsely populated regions in the county of Jämtland during a period of three years, and if/how these projects differ. The examination is based upon the progress of these projects in four of eight communities. Four librarians and two cultural workers have been interviewed in order to get their view of the proceedings of the projects. The results indicate that the four communities all made up plans for three years but in different ways. They mainly collaborated with the school but also with the board of children's health and the preparatory school.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the problems in multilingual thesauri, with a focus on the problem of conceptual equivalence between different languages. This study compares the problems and solutions that have been carried out in the Eurovoc multilingual thesaurus with the ISO 5964 ISO 5964 is a guideline for establishment and development of multilingual thesauri. The Swedish descriptors in the subject area "education and communication", from Eurovoc have been observed and compared with the guidelines recommendations. The results show that, the majority of the investigated Swedish descriptors do not present any problem. Most of the terms that are used as descriptors are found in dictionaries and glossaries or appear with high frequency in Swedish websites.

The purpose of this two years master´s thesis in Archive, Library and Information Museum science is to examine the ideas about children and childhood which have an influence on the storytime at public libraries. The material on which this thesis is based, is a methodbook which is aimed to develop the storytimes and those picture books that are recommend in the methodbook. The theoretical points of departure are discourse analysis and childhood sociology. The concepts of being and becoming are frequently used when analyzing the methodbook. Other theoretical points of departure are the combination of narratologi, semiotics and hermeneutics, which are also used when analyzing the picture books.The result indicates that the storytime, recommended in the methodbook, is based on the idea of a timeless culture of childhood - where the "modern child" including the media used today - is left out. Concepts as nostalgia and pedagogy are tightly connected.

Bioinformatics is an interdisciplinary scientific subject which connects biology, biomedicine and information science. Bioinformatics generates new biological knowledge by using computer methods and biological databases and can thereby play an important role for the understanding of diseases and be used for development of new medicines. The appearance of bioinformatics has thereby had a big impact on biomedical research.In this study, I have examined bioscientists' use of bibliographical databases, bioinformatic databases/web sites and bioinformatic tools and their needs of support concerning these resources. I have also examined which support the scientific libraries offer their users concerning bibliographical databases, bioinformatic databases/web sites and bioinformatic tools and have compared it with the needs the libraries think that the users have and the needs the users state that they have.The results from the study show that there is a wish for library support concerning bibliographical databases, bioinformatic databases/web sites and bioinformatic tools. The wishes of the respondents are in contrast to the libraries' view about bioscientists interest concerning bioinformatic databases/web sites and bioinformatic tools.

All since Thomas Kuhn?s strongly influential The Structure of Scientific Revolutions the Philosophy of Science and ?even more so ?the Social Sciences have contained a greater amount of theories that could be described as more or less relativistic, meaning that the standards of justification or truth thereafter more often were said to be relative to language, culture, or biological makeup. One of the more elaborate ways of developing Thomas Kuhn?s theories in a more relativistic direction ismade by the philosopher Richard Rorty. Rorty, mainly a supporter of Thomas Kuhn, is also a philosopher who has been seen as a main exponent of a so called Postmodern philosophy.My intention in this thesis is to evaluate whether Kuhn's and Rorty's theories of science and knowledge could be regarded as relativism, in respects of their view of incommensurability, rational argumentation, and of their position vis-á-vis the more conventional picture of scientific knowledge and truth.

The purpose of this paper is to carry out a domain analysis of Section for Maps and Pictures at Uppsala University?s Library and investigate its business, collection and knowledge organization. Birger Hjørland?s socio-epistemological domain analytic paradigm is applied. As methods, Hjørland suggests eleven approaches, and from them he emphasizes especially the importance of the historical and epistemological approaches.In this paper three questions are analysed.

The purpose of this thesis is to study to what extent the methodological theories are being reflected in the construction of user surveys at public libraries in Sweden. The study has been conducted as a qualitative literature study in two parts. The first part is an examination of literature concerning survey methodology; the second part is a study of three user surveys conducted at Swedish public libraries after 1995. Our main results indicate that the theories about methodology are followed in part, though it cannot be determined whether this is due to any actual methodological studies, common sense, or just copying other surveys. In our study we have found some areas of user survey construction that need further attention and that would benefit from more extensive methodology studies on the part of survey designers.

Rapporten huvudsyfte är att beskriva hur vi genom användning av språk och kommunikation har kunnat tillgodose våra användares krav på ett ärendehanteringssystem, samt på vilket sätt vi har använt artefakter för att kommunicera. Vi kommer att beskriva olika delar av projektet där språk och kommunikation har haft centrala "roller" och visat sig ha olika betydelse beroende på de personer som medverkar och i vilken miljö situationen har utspelat sig. Rapporten behandlar även hur resultatet av ovanstående har lett oss in i en utvecklingsprocess där vi försökt tillgodose användarens krav på bästa sätt. Vi kommer också att beskriva de kända och tidigare okända metoder som vi använt oss av för att uppnå vår målsättning, att överlämna en första prototyp av ett ärendehanteringssystem..

Secondary schools have for decades debated whether they promote social reproduction which is considered to generate the homogeneous student compositions. The gap between the academic programs and vocational education programs is considered to increase. What in recent years has appeared in research is that the gap is increasing most tend to be in the specific academic program, particularly in science. This paper's intention is to describe the science program at a local level and the pupils who were admitted to the science program autumn 2009 on the basis of an educational sociological perspective. The survey consisted of a census in which all students were given the opportunity to answer a questionnaire.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to investigate the value and impact that reading groups organized by Swedish Public Libraries, have on its participants, role of the librarian and the Library as whole, according to librarian?s conceptions. In literature and earlier research reading groups are described to represent an important reader pro-motion tool for Public Libraries. At the same time the typical reading group member is often described as a per-son with a familiarity of reading. Another purpose is therefore to investigate the contribution of reading groups in promoting reading, according to librarian?s conceptions.

In an international perspective the Russian children s library is a unique institution, being solely committed to children up to 14 years of age. In Russia of today it is, however, being exposed to hard pressure as the economical and social conditions have changed dramatically since the collapse of the USSR. My interest lies in examining this change of living conditions for the children s libraries and how this in turn affect their work and role in the present state. In order to view this change in a longer perspective, I compare the situation for children s libraries during the time of communist regime with that of today using documents about and from children s libraries. I have studied its legal position and conditions, financial and political state, and how the modern society affects children and youth, especially their daily cultural life.