The purpose of this Master thesis is to illustrate the public librarian. People in general, including library users and leading personalities in the field of culture in the communities do not know the tasks of the public librarian. We presume that the vague picture of duties of the public librarian might cause problems. In this dissertation we mean to examine only public librarians, hereby we exclude for example, university- and company librarians. The sentences of this thesis are: How are the public librarians viewed, in meaning of, tasks, role/-s, comptetence/-s, status and image? And can we call it a "profession" in the classical sense? We answer these questions by using relevant literature, interviews and conference paper.

This study investigates the planning process of a university library building. The study s major concern is the cooperation of the main participants in this process: librarians, architects and representatives of university colleges and universities. First the authors present the readers with an overview of the litterature concerning this subject. Then follows a presentation of the three case studies. The authors have interviewed representatives of the three different occupational groups at three different library-building projects: Malmö University, Halmstad University College and the department of social- and behavioural studies at Lund University.

During the changes of time, the stipulations for the existence of books and libraries also change. With technical advances come new possibilities, and the option to publish literature electronically is one of them. The purpose of this Master's thesis is to answer the question how the advantages and disadvantages of electronically published literature is described and constructed. To further deepen the analysis these questions were asked: What aims are the electronically published literature said to achieve? Why are the electronically published literature said to achieve these aims? And who are favoured/disfavoured by electronically published literature? The analyzed publications are four Swedish library related publications: Biblioteksbladet, Dik-forum, Ikoner and Nya Ciceron.

This Masters thesis is a study in library and information science, that examines literature as a tool for young people in their identity creation. Both scientists and teachers have found that teenagers like to identify themselves, when reading literature. The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how youths construct their identity through reading in relation to the purpose that libraries and cultural politics have in youth novels. The starting point of this study is the sociologist Thomas Ziehe and his idea about identity try-out identitetsutprovning and Erving Goffmans dramaturgy perspective. The main question is: what is the relation between young peoples identity creation in youth novels and in their reality in proportion to the young peoples reading of youth literature and the science about their reading? The question is answered in three parts.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the function of the museum library. The methodused consisted partly of literary studies, and partly of field investigations, conducted mainlyin the form of interviews.Two different sets of field studies have been conducted. The first one is an investigation ofthe museum libraries in Goteborg. After a preliminary study, three of these have been selectedfor further investigation. These are the libraries of Göteborgs Konstmuseum, GöteborgsStadsmuseum and Röhsska museet.

This master?s thesis studies library teaching at two university libraries, Freie Universität Berlin in Germany and Södertörn University in Sweden. The aim of this paper is to study views on information literacy, how these views affect teaching practice, and how the teaching of information literacy is connected to, on the one hand, German and Swedish learning culture and, on the other, the local community of practice at the studied university libraries. The theories applied in this paper are learning culture and community of practice as developed in the works of Judith Ricken and Etienne Wenger. The methods that have been used are qualitative, semi-structured interviews that were conducted at both university libraries.It was observed that the teaching practices were highly connected to learning cultures.

This study examined gray areas within professional ethics of a public library organization and investigated the relationship between the library as an organization and the librarian as an employee when it comes to support and opportunities to make exceptions to rules and regulations. This relationship is then related to workplace issues.Data were gathered via interviews with six librarians who were placed into two focus groups. Library organization documents that contain rules and regulations (guidelines) were examined. The presumption was that conformity between librarians? experiences and actions and the organization?s guidelines will tell us something about workplace conditions.

The purpose of this study is to examine if digital public libraries are serendipitous environments. Serendipity in this instance is defined as finding something unexpected and valuable, while searching for something else.A survey was conducted at two Swedish digital public libraries, where the patrons were asked to fill in a questionnaire online. The questions were based on the work on serendipitous digital environments by Lori McCay-Peet, as well as considerations of human factors that could possibly influence serendipity.The result indicate that a majority of patrons experience serendipity at the digital library, although it?s still more common to do so at the physical library or on other web sites. The result also confirms the importance of taking human factors into account when studying serendipity.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to gain insights into students? usage and attitudes towards electronic articles and electronic books and how students feel about a change from print collections to digital collections at Växjö University Library. The main questions are: How do different groups of students use the library collections of electronic articles and electronic books? What factors influence the usage of the library collections of electronic articles and electronic books among students? What are the students? experiences of reading electronic books in comparison with reading print books? What would different groups of students think if the literature they need for their studies were purchased in electronic form instead of print? To answer the questions a user study was carried out at Växjö university library. A web survey was sent to students that had a library card and an email address registered at the library.

The digital era has led to technical advances that have transformed the role of the public library from being a place that is used only through physical visits and material, into also being a virtual space that can be accessed by users from outside the library through Internet-based access to e-media such as e-books and streamed or downloadable audiobooks.The aim of this study is to examine how the role of public libraries in Stockholm County has changed in the process of developing into digital libraries: how this has affected their organisation, work methods and strate- gies, as well as their accessibility. The theoretical framework of the study draws on Michael K. Bucklands theory of information accessibility, which is based on six factors of access that are determined by different types of barriers. The methodology is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Primary data was gathered through an empirical survey, which consisted of a structured questionnaire distributed to most of the public libraries in Stockholm County and semi-structured interviews with selected librarians and experts for further in-depth understanding.

This thesis investigates all aspects of quality and evaluation issues concerning collections of Internet links in public libraries today and in the future. We have studied central theories concerning quality in general as well as quality aspects regarding the Internet and Internet links. In addition to this we have made three case-studies involving the development of collections of Internet links in public libraries of different sizes. The case-studies were made as interviews with professionals responsible for selection, quality assurance and evaluation of electronic information for inclusion in the libraries collections of Internet links. In addition to this we made an e-mail interview with a librarian responsible for one of the most advanced collections of Internet links among Swedish´ public libraries.

Our thesis is an analysis of four librarians view on LGBTQ and which implications these views have on the practical work with LGBTQ issues in the public library. The three ideal types we can identify are the excluding, the including, and the normcritical approach. We also want to know if the four librarians? standpoints can be connected to the above mentioned ideal types. We can see that the area where the implementations of the three ideal types are most visible is the way LGBTQ material is displayed in the library space.

The explosion of information technology has given users direct access to an ocean of information. Increased availability puts increasing demands on the ability of students and researchers to search for, filter, and structure information. In response, the role of the research library has shifted from being primarily an information resource to being an educational resource with a focus on teaching users what is known as information literacy. This thesis is a study of user-education at the Karolinska Institute Library KIB, the largest medical library in the Nordic countries. KIB has invested significant resources in developing user-education, and has a full-time user-education developer and a formal pedagogical platform for user-education.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of transferring information from science to "the field" of environmental protection in Sweden. I have studied four Swedish environmental organizations, Greenpeace Nordic, WWF Sweden, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and Friends of the Earth Sweden to see how they search/get information. I have also studied the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and its role as sender of information, since it is the authority which is responsible for environmental information in Sweden. I have used information and communication theories as a help to analyse my results. While working on this paper I realized that my methods were not the best.

The object of this paper is to examine the marketing of PUNKTmedis, a youth library. In order to do so we have looked at two different perspectives; how the library has marketed itself towards its target group, and how young people perceive what PUNKTmedis has to offer. The thesis? foundation is a case study. Since the question at hand concerns the library?s intentions with and execution of its marketing efforts, as well as the target group?s opinion of them, the empirical data is based partially on an interview with the head of marketing at PUNKTmedis, and partially on a target group questionnaire.