User education is an important aspect of university libraries' service to its users. This Masters' Thesis is about online user education. The aim of this study is to analyse five Swedish online user courses in relation to information literacy and learning theory. The web-sites were explored through textual analyses to find how concepts of information literacy and learning theory are expressed. The theoretical framework is based on Carol C Kuhlthau's three levels of user education, Paul Ramsden's three theories of teaching in higher education and Christine Bruce's different aspects of information literacy.

The aim of this master´s thesis is to explore how a library through it´s spatial distribution expresses, and is an expression for, a view of knowledge. This is done by an analysis of the Orkanen library at Malmö Högskola. Questions posed in this study are: What view of knowledge is mediated through the spatial system and in the shelving of books? What view of learning is expressed in the spatial distribution of functions and artefacts?The theoretical framework of this thesis has two fundamental features. One, which focuses on theories of social space, a part that is mainly influenced by the theories of space syntax.

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 number of smartphones are constantly increasing, 2010 approximately 200 million unitswere sold globally and the figure is predicted to increase to 1 billion in 2016. The increased useof smartphones also carries many risks, for example many smartphones are connected to theInternet. This is a possible way for hackers to gain access to user devices. Smartphones are wellrepresented in research on its safety, while research on its use and users? awareness often leavesmore to be desired.

This study examines negative issues that cannabis users have experienced associated with cannabis use. The author made qualitative interviewsto unveil four cannabis users? life stories. These stories were analyzed through the discourse psychologicalperspective interpretive repertoirein order to explore and identify analogies among the users. The author found that the respondents, despite their seemingly diverse backgrounds and personalities, carry a collective repertoire of similar experience and reasoning around cannabis and society which can be defined as a cannabis discourse; a discourse grounded in facts as well as speculations, arguments which separately may seem reasonable but altogether often appear contradictory, and real-life anecdotes that sometimes reflect paradoxical conclusions.

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 thesis is to examine how high school students use their school library for their information-seeking. The theoretical framework is based on Louise Limbergs three categories of students views on information-seeking and Andrew Large and Jamshid Beheshtis three categories of students choice of information systems. Qualitative interviews were used and seven high school students were interviewed. The empirical material was compared and divided into 9 categories. The results show that the students see the school library as a place where they can search for information, but its also considered to be a good place to hang out between lessons to study or to meet friends.

The purpose of this study is to perform both a quantitative and language philosophical analysis of the folksono-my and the tags in the Stockholm public library catalogue, which together with the Umeå university folksonomy, and the folksonomy of the Norrköping public library are the only library folksonomies in Sweden.The purpose of the first part of the study is to perform an analysis of the linguistical structure of the tags in the folksonomy. To do this a quantitative analysis has been conducted to grammatically categorize and evaluate tags using a method based on Louise Spiteri?s article ?The structure and form of folksonomy tags: the road to the public library catalogue? and the SAO guidelines. This part of the analysis aims to answer questions like: what characteristics do the tags in the folksonomy have and in what ways do they separate themselves from subject headings in a controlled vocabulary? Tags were here categorized according to grammatical properties like parts of speech and their social and private characteristics.

As public libraries in Sweden receive the bulk of their budget from local government funding, which has stayed static or, at best, seen small increases, libraries have been faced with inadequate resources with which to satisfy increasing expectations from users. As few libraries are over-funded in the first place, ways may have to be found to combat this situation. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine alternative sources of funding for Swedish public libraries, and my main focus of interest is that of sponsorship. The method used is a literature study combined with an empirical study, in which interviews were conducted with five persons each with long experience of working with public libraries. The literary study deals with the concept of sponsorship, and the motivations for companies to sponsor are also examined.

The study reported has been conducted in care service guided by the Swedish law LSS( LSS- act concerning support and service for the disabled). The aim of this study is to examine the experiences of the personnel who have attended the Taktipro introductory course with special focus on how they describe the possible effects this may have had on their daily attendance to their special needs users.The method used is a qualitative method of enquiry, based on interview questions sent by mail to all the participants of the Taktipro introductory course. The result shows that the personnel have a positive view on skills in progress and that this program has facilitated the contact between personnel and their special needs users. An awareness about the importance of physical contact has also been revealed as well as an awareness of their own impact on situations at work. The result also indicates that the personnel feel that they have been able to improve the well being for the special needs users. .

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 wide spread of the Internet and new information technologies in recent years has come to effect how libraries manage and disseminate information. Search engines like Google are widely used by people who often find the information retrieval systems of libraries to be too complicated. In 2004 Google announced plans to digitise five major library collections. Organisations representing the publishing industry and authors have since then filed lawsuits against Google claiming that Googles scanning of library books infringe the rights holders copyright. Due to Googles potential impact on libraries this thesis aims to examine how Googles digitisation project, Google Book Search, has been received in the library community.

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 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.