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 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.

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.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the points of view of three groups of actors about their local learning center and its collaboration with the library. By interviewing groups of actors from the municipal sector, the library staff and students, I aim to investigate their associations of the learning centre, what kind of services it should offer, and how they understand the role of the library staff in specific collaboration between the public library and the adult education administration. The study design is based on Gunnar Grepperud?s and Terje Thomsen?s three missions for a local learning centre; the mission of a broker, a meeting place and a motivator. I also use Carol Kuhlthau?s levels of mediation as an approach to investigate how the actors want the library staff to work in relation to the centre.

The main aim of this master thesis was to see the process of an interactive online reference service from idea to final product. The reference service we have studied is developed and used by the Library of the National Institute for Working Life in Stockholm, Sweden and goes by the name phibi. Our goal was to review the whole realization process from the reasons why a service like this was created, how the service was introduced and implemented inside the organisation and finally what the result and consequences were for both the library staff and for the users of the service. Phibi is designed to be a tool that fosters communication between the library staff and the remote users where the users get the opportunity to be helped with their questions by the library staff although they are not physically present in the library. To understand the process we conducted a case study with 11 interviews of the library staff, the superior and the initiator to phibi.

The underlying purpose of this study is to see whether a library focused solely on providing literature in other languages than Swedish serves as a unifying, integrating force, or as an agent for division and exclusion. The study focuses on the International Library in Stockholm. The authors have created a profile of the visitors of the selected library, concerning their characteristics, their library habits and their perceptions of the International library. This profile has then been compared with the staff?s perception of the visitors as a group.

The Swedish public library was founded in the years when the society in Sweden went from being a society of agriculture to industrialism. Modernism was sweeping over the country, everything was possible, which influenced the new society that was built. Now Sweden was going to be a true democracy with responsible and empathic citizens. One of the main tools in this process was to educate people, to get them to read and write and the public library fitted very well into these new ideas. It represented a place, free of charge, where everyone could go to take part of the knowledge and cultural learning that they needed in order to become the citizen that the society required.

The aim of this study has been to investigate actors? methods for acquiring information that is necessary for their profession, with a focus on the more random methods they might possibly use. The study is based on the following questions: What information needs do actors have in relation to their profession? Which methods do actors use to procure information? Which information systems do actors use? What role does the library play in the actors? acquisition of information? Through an interview study with 10 informants a picture is formed of the actors? information behavior. With the help of theoretical ideas regarding random methods of acquisition, we describe which information needs actors have and how they acquire that information.

The main purpose of this bachelor?s thesis is to examine how Swedish upper secondary school librarians and related staff relate to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The research is placed in the all-embracing context of information literacy and source criticism on the Internet. The study was carried out in the form of qualitative interviews and based on two theoretical bases: firstly, the concept of cognitive authority stipulated by Patrick Wilson, and secondly the idea that Wikipedia has a draw towards late modern epistemological assumptions. The latter theory was also associated with the perceptions of knowledge among the library staff interviewed.

The aim of this thesis is to mediate to the reader an image of Chinese classification systems and in what way the methods of classification have progressed during time. The tradition of classification in China is very old and dates back more than two thousand years, but it wasnt until the downfall of the dynastic era in the beginning of the 20th century, that Chinese libraries and methods of classification were modernized. This thesis also identifies the development of Chinese librarianship which is of old age since Chinese literature stretches three thousand years back. The main question is in what way the values of three different philosophies are reflected in five classification systems compiled between 1953-1975. The three philosophies are Daoism, Confucianism and Maoism/Mao Zedong Thought.

Integration projects at two libraries: multiculture, meetings and possibilities takes its start in the fact that Sweden is populated with people from many different nations. The libraries have a unique possibility to arrange integration projects as a supplier of culture and information. This case study focuses on two integration projects arranged by two libraries; the library of Jönköping with the project Brobyggarbiblioteken, and the library of Kortedala which was involved in the project Ordbron. My purpose is to find out how these two libraries chose to work with integration, migrants and multiculture. The aim is to examine if the library could function as a passway to the Swedish society, and to find out if the library can facilitate for migrants to maintain contact with their native country.

TitleSystems, Stability and Power. The Discourse of Information in Organizing Knowledge.AbstractThe aim of this Master's thesis is to inquire into the consequences of an unequal distribution of power between information discourses in the field of knowledge organisation. A deconstruction of Jennifer Rowley's and John Farrows introductory textbook Organizing Knowledge from 2000 is related to the major discourses of information in LIS. Questions posed in this study are: What meaning is ascribed to information in the material studied? Which information discourses are given a dominant position? Which are excluded? and: How does this affect the construction of the library and information science student's identity, in relation to practices of knowledge organisation? The theoretical framework is provided by Ernesto Laclau's and Chantal Mouffe's theory of discourse and combined with techniques for text analysis originating from the work of Norman Fairclough.The analysis reveals a strong domination of a cognitive discourse of information that underlines the importance of information systems for the organisation of knowledge.

This evaluational study has been initiated by the County Council of Gävleborg (LandstingetGävleborg), politically responsible (and the main economical) authority of BibliotekGävleborg, the regional library institution in the county of Gävleborg, Sweden.The aim of the study is threefolded:1. to evaluate the organization of Bibliotek Gävleborg during the 1990's as we11 as theeffects of a reorganization carried out in 1990, and, through the use of interviews and a questionnaire, to ascertain the attitudes of Bibliotek Gävleborg's branch users (mainlythe municipal libraries in the county) towards the organizational development.2. to evaluate and compare regional library activities in Gävleborg prior to and duringthe 1990's, and to investigate the attitudes of the afore-mentioned branch users towardsBibliotek Gävleborg's activities.3. to investigate and discuss possible future directions of regional library development in Sweden in general, and in Gävleborg in particular.The closing, debating chapter in the study also'contains a few suggestions of measures to enhance regional library activity in Gävleborg..

The purpose of the master thesis was to reflect and analyze music library activities and policies in the public libraries in the area around the city of Borås, in the south-western part of Sweden. With this thesis I also wanted to look at the interaction between the public libraries, the music school and the music associations in the same area. To investigate these matters, qualitative method was used in the form of interviews with seven librarians from seven different libraries and five representatives of different local music organizations. Other methods used were observations and source studies. The literature used discusses the role of the music department of public libraries as well as that of a music librarian working in a public library.

This Master thesis aims to study the relation between Swedish governmental cultural policy and cultural events at two Swedish public libraries. The Masters thesis demonstrates how national cultural policy regulates every part of the public library. This demonstration is a result based upon national cultural policy documents and interviews with employees at two public libraries in Sweden. The conclusion that national cultural policy regulates this part of the public library is drawn with help of the circle of culture as applied in Culture Studies and Michel Foucault theories of power. The thesis contains the answer of four questions, two involving cultural policy and the other two events at the library.