The aim of this master thesis?s is to examine what functions writing activities can have in the public library. Some public libraries offer their visitors writing activities, for example courses and camps. The public library is an institution with a particular identity, with special norms and properties which participants within the institution construct and reproduce. The main question of this thesis is to investigate how writing activities can be a part of the public library?s institutional identity and what functions writing activities in the public library can have.

The aim of this Master thesis is to investigate the similarities and differences between a traditional and a new classification scheme. Two classification systems are compared, "The Swedish Library Classification System" the SAB-system - and Yahoo!. The SAB-system has been used in Swedish libraries since the beginning of the 20^th century, and Yahoo! has been online since 1994. Yahoo! has a Swedish version of its international original, which is used in this study to get a similar starting point with the SAB-system. The method used for this is a content analysis, which in this case is not a quantitative analysis.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine children's communication and interaction during story time at the public library. The aim is also to examine how to develop the story time ? in terms of participation and equality ? at a specific library.Action research was used as a research strategy and participant observation, log, tutoring and interviews as methods to collect data. Since action research is done on the basis of practice, a significant collaboration with the librarian and the participant children is taking place within this study.Research from the fields of Library and Information Science, Education and Childhood Sociology form the interdisciplinary research area to which this study links. The theoretical framework consists of theory and concepts from the Socio-cultural Perspective, Poststrucuralist Feminism and Childhood Sociology.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine different factors that may influence the librarian in the selection of popular music. The study is conducted through a qualitative method, influenced by grounded theory. The results are based on patterns drawn from both interviews with six libraries and from literature. The literature review concerns foremost cultural politics, music aesthetics, the sphere of popular music in Sweden today and the impact of commercialism. Also the purposes of popular music in a library, aspects of values of popular music and assortment policies are being discussed.

The public libraries were quick to adapt to the changes that the Internet brought on, and today library websites are an important part of the public library. To meet the needs of teens today, the library website could offer a range of contents to make it an attractive place on many levels; both the academic needs as well as social and recreational needs should be addressed.The aim of this thesis is to evaluate public library websites for teenagers in Sweden, and to examine how well the websites address the developmental tasks and needs that teenagers have. The method used is website evaluation, one quantitative and one qualitative. A total of 60 public library sites for teenagers were evaluated, using 11 criteria based on Havighursts developmental tasks. The quantitative evaluation measured how many functions each website had per criteria, and showed that the majority of the sites had one or two functions for most of the criteria.

The subject for this Master's thesis is the mission of the public library concerning target group everybody. Control documents, traditions, norms and trends influence how this is interpreted and how the library's service is being formed. The often very abstract terms used to describe the public library's mission makes it open for different interpretations. We are of the opinion that the public library's service should be formed to reflect the needs, interests, and priorities of the community it services, in order to be more attractive and useful.The aim of our study is to examine how the public librarians define and adjust to the mission to satisfy all citizens needs. Why do they choose to concentrate on certain target groups? And what does that show of how the public libraries reflect their communities? Our investigation includes examining six activities aimed at a certain target group and the six public libraries that carried these out.

This paper aims to apply a specific architectural theory onto Lund City Library in order to achieve a better understanding of how the physical concept of the library is affecting our knowledge and our production of meaning; and furthermore how it suggests a certain form of usage. This paper discusses the ways in which architecture is affecting us when we use the library. The paper attempts to answer the following question: ? Which one of Koch?s spatial structures could apply to Lund City Library, and in which ways could this spatial structure be a producer of meaning? The specific architectonical theory used is developed by Daniel Koch in his paper Spatial Systems as Producers of Meaning: the Idea of Knowledge in Three Public Libraries. This theory is the method of the paper as well.

The aim of this qualitative study is to examine how users of talking books perceive the possibility of downloading talking books from home without visiting the library and how this affects them. Three research questions were formulated:How do talking book users reflect on their library usage?Have the subject's' library usage changed since introduction to the download service?How have users experienced the service?To answer these questions, five semi structured interviews were conducted with five different users of talking books in Sweden. All subjects were currently using download services which they had gained access to from their local public libraries. In analyzing the interviews, a theory established by Henrik Jochumsen and Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen in Gør biblioteket en forskel (2000) was used.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine how college library managers perceive shelves of book reservation system in an integrity perspective. Privacy is an important part of everyday life in the society of today and according to some people, for example a former library lawyer in the Swedish Royal Library, these shelves conflicts with the Swedish law of Secrecy (Sekretesslagen 9 kap. 22 §). I am therefore interested in how they perceive this system: what weaknesses and strengths it has, why they implemented it, how they have interpreted this law. To answer this I have used a qualitative method called phenomenography and done interviews with five college library managers.

The main purpose of this Bachelor´s thesis is to investigate the visions chief librarians have for their public libraries. The world around us and our way of living is changing as the society is changing ever more rapidly. This evolvement also influences the public library, its role for society and individuals, its activities and its design. The question is how the public library can face these changes and what function and role it can get and make for itself in the future. Through qualitative interviews with five chief librarians our aim is to answer the main question of this thesis: What are the visions that chief librarians on public libraries have for the public library´s future? This study also contain the role the chief librarians give the public library of today and what they mean is necessary for their visions to be achieved.

This Masters thesis concerns how library and preschool can cooperate in supporting childrens language development and especially that of bilingual children. We have investigated how librarians and preschool teachers different competences can complement each other to gain the best result in work with childrens language development. This study is based on qualitative interviews with four librarians and three preschool teachers. The answers from them have been analysed according to different categories. Our results show that both librarians and preschool teachers think that bilingual children need extra support and that it takes longer to learn two languages.

How do you see on natural science within preschool? Does education and interest play a role for how the educationalist works with natural science? And is the children?s interest for natural science affected by the educationalist, what does the educationalist think himself? These questions have I under my teachers training and under deputyship in preschool asked myself and these questions lies to behalf for my investigation. I interviewed five educationalists on different preschools for my investigation.My investigation resulted in that I have been able to see a certain conjunction between how you work with natural science in preschool and the educationalist education or interest. What also plays a role is that you often associate natural science with knowledge of nature. The educationalist seems overall positive to natural science, but depending of a lack of knowledge it feels strange and difficult.

Citizenship information is defined as the information the citizen needs to be able to take part in and influence the society. Since it is a democratic issue that information concerning the citizens role in society really reaches the citizens, it is of importance to study how the citizens proceed when they have a need for this information. The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate how our eight informers proceed when they experience this need in a non-work situation. We performed qualitative interviews. The most important part of our interviews was the introduction of some fictitious problems to the informants.

The purpose of this master´s thesis was to investigate the role and function of the annual reports of public libraries: for what purpose are they put together and how are they evaluated and utilised. The study presents different views on the structure and content of library annual reports. Focusing on a specific public library and its municipal administration, the authors identify and describe problems and possibilities regarding the library annual reports. The study also provides a general view of their occurrence, their addressees and the importance attached to them.In a review of current literature on accounting and activity reports the authors place the annual reports of public libraries in a wider context. The study also presents two current models of performance measurement - the Intangible Assets Monitor and the Balanced Scorecard - which were developed in the private sector, and the authors discuss their relevance when applied to public libraries.Data were collected both in interviews and by means of a questionnaire.

The point of departure for this thesis was an article written by Christer Hermansson (2008). He thinks that librarians, following the development of Library 2.0 and the change of public libraries, have strayed away from what he believes should be the focus of the library: Literature. The aim of this thesis is to study how librarians in six Swedish libraries perceive their occupational roles. How does the increased user control, which is seen as part of Library 2.0, affect the tasks of libraries and librarians? The material used in this study was acquired using a qualitative interview technique in which six librarians working in public libraries with experience of IT, mediation and purchase of literature partook.