<p>This explorative study examines approximately one hundred electronic library homepages. It focuses on four aspects: form, content, structure and user support. Form relates to the presentation of information and is concerned with the relationship between text and graphics. Content refers to the type of information and services that an electronic library offers. Structure is concerned with the guiding principles that have motivated the grouping of information and services on the homepages.

The structure of the Swedish public library field has been evolving during the last decades. The traditional mission of educating the citizens to become responsible, democratic and knowledgeable members of society has in a way led to the integration between public and school libraries. Lately new co-operational models have been under debate and a sense of resistance has arisen because of the economical and market influences. In parallel with closure of library branches new libraries have evolved in malls and wash houses and some with self-service with no use of librarians. This work shows how co-operation in rural areas finds the common goals for the people living there who are concerned about keeping the service needed including the public library and thus using existing means and crossing borders of commercial thinking.

The aim of this thesis is to accomplish a user study on how e-book users experience the electronic book, the e-book, as an instrument for reading fiction. The study is based upon qualitative interviews with twelve e-book users and a small survey carried out at the Stockholm City Library. The purpose is to identify the users' incentive for choosing the e-book as a medium for reading fiction, elucidate if and how the interface of the e-book affects the reading experience, and distinguish if there are any factors common to the users in their choice of reading e-books. How the users look upon the future of the e-book is also discussed. Among the people asked in the survey we note little if any demand for the e-book as an instrument for reading fiction.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the accessibility and barriers of public libraries to intellectual and mentally disabled children and young people. This we will do by examining whether the library staff acts according to policies of the libraries. Our method has been qualitative interviews with library staff and we have also observed the environment, media and marketing of these libraries. As a theoretical starting point of the analysis we use Michael Buckland?s different aspects of access to information.

This paper aims to analyze how preservation of and access to old and rare book collections are organized in public libraries in Serbia. The paper is based on an analysis of documents, a survey and qualitative interviews with librarians in Belgrade and Novi Sad. Serbia is a country that has experienced violent historical periods with far-reaching consequences for its old and rare book collections. The interpretative background refers to documents about cultural policy in Europe and in Serbia. Serbia is a country in transition which aims to join the European Union.

The purpose with this study is to examine school-leaders?, school-librarians? and teachers? expectations and aims for their school-libraries at two different schools in the city of Växjö. The study is based on these five questions:· How do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers think about learning?· What function does the school-library have?· What roles do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers have in the school-library?· How do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers experience the co-operation in the school-library?· How would school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers wish that the co-operation should be?To be able to answer these questions I have done thirteen qualitative interviews and studied literature relevant to the subject. Three different theories are used as a theoretical framework; the traditional perspective, individual constructivism and social constructivism.

The focus of this master thesis is the library politics of the French Right wing party the National Front and the debate that followed the application of this politics. This qualitative study is divided into two parts where the critics to this politics represents one side and the adherents the other. The critics are composed by representatives from the French, Swedish and ? to some extent ? international library sector, while the adherent side is made up of politicians from the National Front and their adherents. The empiric material mostly consists of articles published in library, Right wing and daily press.

The aim of this thesis is to study a number of standards and theories, from the two research areas human-computer interaction and psychology, about how a graphical user interface (GUI) should be composed in order to facilitate interaction between humans and computers. Special emphasis is put on how the GUI should take into consideration the strengths and limitations of human cognition and perception. A study of three web catalogues shows how these theories appear when concretised. The following questions are answered in this thesis:What guidelines and styleguides can be found that specify the design of a user-friendly GUI?How do a few library catalogues on the web match a selection of these design principles?The guidelines are extracted from literature concerning human-computer interaction, psychology, automated library systems and web design.

This paper is a study of Vadstena monastery's book acquisitions and book collection 1374-1595. Studying catalogue descriptions of manuscripts and incunabula in Uppsala University library, the author has aimed to examine the development over a period of time, concentrating on way and place of acquisition, and desired types of texts.A short description and history of the monastery and its library is given. The study opens with the author stating there must have existed a plan for the book acquisitions and collection. A survey investigation shows, that the usable material is too small and somewhat nonrepresenta­tive of the monastery library to form a basis for a fair analysis. Further investigations give material to form a basis for some careful statements, saying that book production and also acquisitions concentrated on sermons literature, and that this type dominated the library collection throughout the time of development, followed by the philosophical-theological university literature..

This Master's thesis in Library and Information Science aims to explore if personal patterns can be detected in web-searching. It is based on a study where the search sessions of nine test persons were video-recorded, transcribed into logs and analysed.A major objective was to find out whether there is a correlation between individual searchers' personal attributes and their web search behaviour. The logs were therefore compared with the test persons' results in a learning style test (Kolb's Learning Style Inventory) and with interview answers about information behaviour and personal background.While several patterns were indeed discovered, none of them turned out to be strictly personal. The nine test persons could be divided into five types of searchers: the purely analytic searcher; the generally analytic searcher; the balanced searcher; the mixed searcher and the browser. All types of searchers were found to have the attribute learning style in common.

This masters thesis aims to explore the branch libraries in Kalmar municipality and their relation to the Information and communication technology ICTsociety. How do they adapt to and assimilate with, the ICT-society? What are their roles in local social networks and do they make a difference there? To answer these questions, critical discourse analysis, CDA, as founded by Norman Fairclough is applied to four interwievs with branch library managers. Other theorists used are Michel Foucault, Chaïm Perelman and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A solid description of todays society on different levels is also given.

This user study was carried out at the library at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg in the spring of 1999. Chalmers wanted to investigate how much their employees use electronic journals. To facilitate decision-making and be cost effective, the library needed to know about their customers' opinions. The main purpose was to investigate the usage of electronic journals, how the library's choice of these journals affects the frequency of use and what the attitudes towards them are. A questionnaire was sent out to 2 400 employees; 477 replies were received.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to study how librarians experience reference work. We wanted to get a better understanding about librarians assignments through the study. We chose to limit the study to public libraries, and to the south of Sweden. The questions used in our study are: How do librarians interpret the conception of reference work? What values do librarians have concerning reference work? How do librarians experience reference work? How do librarians look at different roles in reference work? We chose to use a fenomenographically inspired method.

Purpose?This study has examined the information behaviour and perception of information in a group ofinformation users who have a critical approach to the media and the information supply. Some of them call themselvesor are being called conspiracy theorists. The purpose was to examine how their information behaviour is influenced by the belief that the information is biased or inaccurate and what the information behaviour looks like when the user searches for discrepancies rather than a response to a question.Method?The study is based on transcribed interviews and email responses to interview questions.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how Braille users needs are satisfied by The Library of Talking Books and Braille TPB. The other issues are: How do some of the library workers at TPB experience that the needs of Braille users are satisfied? Is it possible to make the service better in the future for Braille users and in that case, how? The study is based upon interviews with five persons, who have defective vision and read Braille. I have also interviewed two employees at TPB who have defective vision. To build up a complete background presentation of the subject I have chosen a book about hermeneutic interpretation to understand how historic facts influence the function of the subject today and in the future.