The aim of this Masters thesis is to explore the image of the librarian from three groups: librarians, researchers and directors of staff from industrial companies. The purpose was also to study the image of the future librarian as the Swedish School of Library and Information Science at the University College of Borås introduces it. As my theoretical framework I used communication theories and marketing theories. I searched answers to the following questions: - Is there any resemblance at all between the common stereotypes of the librarian and the images given by the participants of the survey? - How do the librarians view themselves? - What is the image of the librarian among the researchers who use the services of the library? - What is the image of the librarian among the directors of staff from the industrial companies? - What is the image of the librarian given by an educational institution during the basic education? I contacted the participants and asked them to draw a picture of a librarian and write a short text about the picture.

Växjö is a medium-sized town situated in the centre of the county Småland in Sweden with a good infrastructure and logistics and with a university that encourages cooperation with private and public companies. It is in this town that our case study of Småland Airport will take place. The aim of this study is to examine in which way the program of Library and Information Science at the Linnaeus University in Växjö offers knowledge that can be relevant for the staff at the airport in Växjö - Småland Airport. Using Wilsons model as our theoretical framework we examine how these two align with each other and by using a matrix that we ourselves elaborated in our analysis, we provide a clear picture of how the comparability two places comparability is represented. The result shows that there are compatible aspects to the Småland Aiports needs and what the program of Library and Information Science has to offer.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate how the image of the Public library is described in the Swedish national library politics, and compare it with the image given of the public library in the Danish national library politics. The method used for this analysis is a comparative discourse analysis of the homepages produced by the Swedish central government Regeringen and Kulturrådet and its Danish counterpart Kulturministeriet and Biblioteksstyrelsen. Theories on postmodernity have been used to analyze how the Swedish and the Danish central governments image of the Public library corresponds with a changing society and the changing behaviour of the public library users. Our analysis concludes that the traditional view of the Public library as an institution mainly concerned with literature and reading still is of great significance in the discourse of the Swedish central government. In contrast, the Danish central government presents a more postmodern view of the public library as an institution that is part of the Information- and the Knowledge society.

This study is an attempt to shed light on problems and possibilities of the school library of the Swedish comprehensive school concerning library law and goals of the school and the school library. Many investigations about the role of the school library of the comprehensive school have been carried through. They have all more or less come to the same conclusions. In spite of Swedish library law and goal documents of the school library, the school libraries are often neglected, if not will and commitment are to be found among teachers. Using a model of the school organisation by Gunnar Berg, three cases of school libraries are presented and analysed in a larger organisational and political perspective.

Studies of the information needs of library patrons are necessary in order for the library to serve the community. Alas, studies of non-heterosexual persons are rare in the field of Library and Information Science in Sweden. This study aims at examining the information situation of women in same-sexed parenthood by means of analysing their situation as norm-breaking. The study is done through examining the specific information needs of this group, how they seek and receive information, what barriers they encounter and what function the library has in this information situation. A queer theoretical approach to heteronormativity in combination with McKenzie?s two-dimensional model of information seeking is used to perform a qualitative analysis of the material.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to study opinions about the Swedish hospital libraries and their activities for the patients, in a selection of Swedish library journal articles. The theoretical starting point is grounded in Laclau and Mouffes discourse theory. The empirical material consists of 43 articles from three library journals; Biblioteksbladet, Blänkaren and DIK-forum, published between 1990 and 2004. These are analysed through a reading scheme in four levels. In the empirical material two themes appear; the culture theme and the patient information theme.

Library and information science students often ask themselves if their education will be sufficient and adapted to the work tasks they will meet with as future librarians. It is the aim of this Master thesis to investigate LIS-graduates' experiences of the transfer from academic studies into professional life. The thesis thus treats four questions: I: What problems, if any, does the LIS-graduate experience when first employed? 2: Does the recently employed librarian feel that the academically obtained knowledge is applicable in professional life? And, if so, how does it apply? 3: Does the new employee find that there are areas in which his/her academic education has been insufficient? 4: What is the general attitude towards LIS-graduates' education among colleagues and is the library staff prepared to provide the necessary instructions? The investigation is performed through interviews with eight LIS-graduates, all of whom have recently started working as public librarians. The analysis is based on the concepts of competence, qualifications, work skills, knowledge and in the processes of formal and practical learning.

The web sites of libraries are to a large extent their public face and to help market their services, the web sites must have interesting and regularly renewed content. They must also be visually attractive and easily used, and thus be well structured and have a well functioning navigational system. The web masters' awareness of the ability of web sites to attract users to the site and also to the library, as well as their knowledge of suitable content and site construction, is crucial for how successful the web site actually is at marketing the library. The research question is: How do the studied web sites function as marketing sources and service providers for the libraries, and are the web masters aware of the importance of the web site? The purpose is to investigate how the library personnel looks upon the web site as a possible way to increase the popularity of the library among the public, and to study the construction and content of the library web sites to find out how well these serve their purpose.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate the library needs of distance students. This user study has a student perspective and concentrates on the main question of which way library needs might be expressed by distance students. Associated topics addressed by this study include; the problem of learning centres lacking their own library support, how distance students look upon library support as a concept and whether distance students prefer public libraries or university libraries, and why they make this choice. These questions may give the answer to how distance students deal with information literacy. Theories chosen by the study are in the fields of pedagogical and library science, the social cultural theory by Roger Säljö and in Tom Wilson's theories on user studies and information needs.

This Master's thesis in library and information science aims to shed light on the concept of information literacy in higher education, particularly as manifested in two dissertations on the subject. Two models of information literacy are compared: Christina Doyle's list of ten attributes for students to master and Christine Bruce's seven conceptions of information literacy. The cognitive-behaviourist tradition in Doyle's study and the alternative, phenomenographic approach in Bruce's research are compared and commented. The taxonomies and internal relationship between separate components in the two models are investigated, as well as the ways the models relate to each other. The respective views of knowledge and learning are described.

The main object for this thesis is to study how students in library and information science at Högskolan i Borås search and valuate documents in the process of writing a paper. The study is based on a series of interviews with 12 students. Our methodology is also based on studies of their final product. The goal of the study was to map out how the students make their decisions during their search process. We studied the students use of search words, relevance judgements and how their need for information changed trough out the writing of their paper.

My purpose with this study was partly to examine how some Swedish science teachers teach and their knowledge of the science curriculum, and how this affects their teaching. I also aimed to compare the Swedish and Irish science curriculum. The method I undertook to achieve this study was to carry out six interviews with science teachers in Sweden. I also completed a text analyse of both the Swedish & Irish science curriculum. The results of the interviews showed that the teachers think the curriculum is important but they do not always keep to it.

In this Masters thesis we investigate query expansion using an electronic thesaurus. We formed 30 topics from the library and information science field. For each topic three searches were made in the bibliographic database LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts via CSA Cambridge Scientific Abstracts. LISA has an electronic thesaurus attached. We used this thesaurus to form baseline queries, baseline queries expanded with synonyms, and baseline queries expanded with both synonyms and related terms.

This Master´s thesis examines the conceptual ideas of science fiction and science fiction fandom produced in the Swedish fanzine Science Fiction Forum (1960-) between the years 1960 and 1980. Science Fiction Forum was and still is a fanzine published by Skandinavisk Förening för Science Fiction (Scandinavian Science Fiction Club). Both the club and the fanzine are a part of the phenomenon called fandom.A fandom is a collective of people called fans who form a community by sharing a special interest in a special object. The fanzine is one of the many material products produced by fans within a certain fandom. Science Fiction Forum and Skandinavisk Förening för Science Fiction were founded in 1959 and are a part of swedish science fiction fandom, where the object of fandom is literary science fiction..The primary focus of this thesis is the meta discussion on science fiction and science fiction fandom in Science Fiction Forum.

This thesis is a case study which describes the automation of a university library in Sub-Saharan Africa. The aim of the case study is, firstly; to find out which actors and factors have started and influenced the automation and the implementation of ICT at Makerere University Library in Kampala, Uganda. Secondly; it also discusses if the automation has changed the librarys condition. The empirical material consists of fifteen interviews with librarians and students. The empirical material itself has functioned as a base when discerning the analytical themes.