The aim of this issue is to study how Swedish public libraries deal with the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of information in connection with public use of the Internet. The authors intention has been to find out whether the public use of the Internet has caused ethical problems for library workers and how the libraries solve situations when they consider their principles violated by Library users. The authors study the debate on the issue in a couple of Swedish library magazines published during the late 1990s and they also give a few examples from the USA during the same period. They study the ethical principles and directives for schools published by the Swedish Board of Education as they claim that many of the public Library users are students who bring along their ethical conceptions and thereby affect the ethical climate of the libraries. In their study the authors refer to ethical rules given to librarians by their trade union DIK and to the conclusions drawn from the hearing Good Ethics on the Net held by the Swedish IT Commission in 1998.

The aim of this master thesis was to find out about librarians opinions of childrens libraries on the Internet, if it is a resource to reach children. Qualitative interviews were conducted with three librarians who had participated in the construction and development of childrens libraries on the Internet. IT and the Internet play an important role in childrens lives and children are using it to a greater extent. Libraries have begun to integrate IT and Internet into their services and are offering service on the Internet. The public library websites are usually for grown-ups and very few are directed to children.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of how elderly people seek and use information in everyday situations. A further aim is to suggest ways for the library to offer more services specifically tailored for pensioners. This is an important topic as pensioners are a rapidly growing group of Library users. We conducted qualitative interviews with four elderly people concerning their information needs in everyday life, and discovered that they rarely use the library, preferring instead to get their information from various internet sites and their pensioners? organisation.

There are reasons to believe that recent changes in the Swedish academic library environment create new images of identity. New information technology, changed educational methods and increasing numbers of students in higher education heavily influence the professional basis for librarians. The purpose of this essay is to examine and describe how the images of identity are conceived and expressed by staff in two university colleges in Sweden, Malmö University and Södertörn University. We define identity as the images of what the library is, what it is aiming to be in the future, what it should do and how. In a qualitative study attitudes towards and opinions of the role of the library in the university environment are investigated.

The aim of this study is to look at the identity of the public library, and to examine one way to make the identity of a specific library strong. PUNKTmedis is a newly opened library in Stockholm, aimed solely at people between 13-19. The question to be answered was: How can it affect the image of the public librarys identity when you aim the activity towards a specific user group? To answer this question, the qualitative method of case-study was used. Five interviews were carried out, with representatives from three different groups: users, politicians and librarians.

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.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine Library users experience encountering exposed literature. Shops and stores expose the products they most of all want to sell, a kind of marketing strategy that influences our inclination to buy. By conducting a quantitative study, at two minor public libraries, and using theories from the marketing area this thesis intended to investigate the subject further. Eighty library visitors, between age 10 and XX filled out a questionnaire asking how the users experience or register exposed literature and what makes users borrow or not borrow exposed literature. The respondents find exposed literature helpful in directing them to new interesting suggestions of books they otherwise wouldn?t have borrowed.

Sensory marketingAn effective instrument for libraries? We are living in a world of constant communication and information and because of that, marketing in general seem to have no distinctive effect. Consumers become overwhelmed by all the advertising messages. Due to this, it is clear that organizations like libraries must create a deeper and more personal connection to increase user satisfaction and foster the use of services, among both users and potential users. One way to achieve this is to make use of all the emotional elements of a product or a service.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate issues concerning lifelong learning and the role of the public librarian. This is done by examining LärForum Forum for Learning, a project initiated at a public library located outside of Stockholm, with the aim of supporting adults lifelong learning. The major questions raised in this study are: How do the seven librarians interviewed define lifelong learning and how do they perceive their own role in relation to lifelong learning in the public library? Do they work with adult learners in a different way than they do with "ordinary" users of the library? Has their conception of their own role as a public librarian changed as a result of LärForum, and do they find it necessary to acquire new skills because of the project? Data was collected through interviews and observation, and the study is a qualitative case study. The main results are that the librarians see their role in lifelong learning in the public library as self-evident, and they see lifelong learning mostly as learning for an individuals personal development.

This thesis deals with the question of why the Swedish Academy Dictionary has its own Library when, for almost a hundred years, it has been located at the University Library of Lund. Looking at the library functions: librarian, users, room and books and their external factors: economy, internal actors, external actors and the development of the Swedish Academy Dictionary helped to shed light upon which relations between these factors have been important in the development of the library. The results show that there has not been a conscious plan behind the Library. A large number of the books in the Library was given by those who have worked at the Dictionary and also by their friends and collegues. Another part was given by the Swedish Academy and was partly gathered when the project was still in Stockholm.

The aim of this essay is to examine fan culture?s role in Swedish public libraries. I have interviewed, via email, six librarians who encounter and use fan culture in their daily work. The theoretical elements of my essay are based on a modified set of theories by Dorte Skot-Hansen that identifies six ideal types of cultural political rationalities. My study reveals that fan culture is used in Swedish libraries as a tool in increasing user participation in library activities.

The aim of this essay is to examine different discourses concerning adolescents and library youth services that can be identified in the material. 73 articles from the Swedish library journal, Biblioteksbladet, were analysed trough a model. The different articles were all published between 1916 and 2005. The analysis revealed a result that consists of four discourses about adolescents and youth services at different libraries between 1916 and 2005: the library as fostering discourse, a new era discourse, the visiting activities discourse and the young adult discourse. The library as fostering discourse is based on the idea that the library itself doesnt need to change the service to adolescents, instead the adolescents are supposed to change into good Library users.

In this study my aim has been to discover what connections can be made between the way of creating a library building and the general values concerning the library activities and the Library users. What kind of ideology could possibly be reflected in a library room? My study includes two different parts. First of all there is a theoretical section based upon literature relevant for the subject. Here I try to focus on the libraryÕs role in society as a public room.

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.

The aim of this Bachelor´s thesis is to investigate how library statistics, performance measurement and indicators represent the modern public library activity. During the last decades the public library has gone through a lot of changes. Information overall has increased and new technology has been introduced into the library. This new development has had effects on the Library users. The statistics reported to the Statens kulturråd (National Arts Council) has not changed in the same way.