The aim of this Master?s thesis is to identify and describe thedifferent roles that are expressed in a public library by researchingthem in the four policy documents concerning Västerås public libraryin 2010 and by interviews with three specially chosen key persons.Further studied are the discourses that can be perceived in thematerial and whether or not the roles could come in conflict witheach other. Laclau and Mouffes discursive theory constitutes themethodical frame for this thesis and by using terms from discursivetheory the analysis was made in four steps.Seven roles were identified from the policy documents concerningVästerås public library and the interviews with the key persons. Thefirst role of the public library was the intermediary of knowledge andinformation, the second was viewed as a democratic role, the third asa marketing role, the fourth as a role that handled the collaboration,the fifth role was to improve literacy, and the sixth and seventh roleswere as a culture centre and a meeting place. With the help fromkeywords five major discourses were found within the material.

The present thesis is about how preschool children develop their language skills. The purpose is also to discuss how library and preschool can collaborate and in different ways together help the children to achieve different skills and to use their first and second language in a more appropriate way. The main problem identified from literature and own observations is why library and preschool dont collaborate to help young children to develop their language skills? Which reasons are behind a lacking collaboration? What can be done to increase collaboration between the library and the preschool? How can librarians and preschool teachers use their different professional skills in the best manner to be able to help the children to develop their skills in language acquisition? Is it possible to measure childrens language skills and how can one decide what characterizes a good collaboration? We started with a literature review and continued with collecting qualitative data by means of interviews with people who worked as librarians and preschool teachers, who were supposed to collaborate in a language oriented project. We have chosen different language theories by well-known scientists and we have only picked a few of them, which we considered relevant for the chosen topic.

Smålands museum, the museum of Småland, is a museum for the county of Kronoberg, a mission given to the museum by the state and county council. The main fields of the museum are the cultural heritage and the history of culture of the region. The museum of Småland is also the Swedish museum of glass. This Master s thesis focuses on the information requirements of the employees at the museum of Småland. Because of the financial status of the museum, the librarian that worked at the museum had to quit about four years ago.

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 purpose of this paper is to investigate the process of transferring information from science to "the field" of environmental protection in Sweden. I have studied four Swedish environmental organizations, Greenpeace Nordic, WWF Sweden, the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and Friends of the Earth Sweden to see how they search/get information. I have also studied the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and its role as sender of information, since it is the authority which is responsible for environmental information in Sweden. I have used information and communication theories as a help to analyse my results. While working on this paper I realized that my methods were not the best.

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 essay is to examine three separate Swedish public libraries and their respective websites on the grounds of the usability sciences. I firstly had to summarize the main properties of the usability-field in order to gain an extended knowledge of its purposes and possible usage for today?s library systems. I was then able to apply the extended knowledge in the examination of the three library websites and the purpose of determining whether or not they were designed according to the standards set by the usability-sciences.Usability is a rather new science that deals with the dissection and examination of computer-based systems, in order to find the key components that make systems user-friendlier. With user needs being the main focus of its research, usability tries to meet all the different needs of the modern user and construct systems that are less system-centered and more user-centered.

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.

This master's thesis is a study of how librarians are depicted in crime fiction. 12 American and English mysterynovels featuring librarians in a central role were studied and analysed using character theory. Recurring traitswere identified and organised into themes. A number of prominent traits and themes emerged that show librariansas orderly and organised bibliophiles, but with a taste for adventure and excitement. They are keen problem solverswho enjoy a challenge, at work, or in the form of crime detection.

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 purpose of this masters thesis is to find out if public libraries provide new age materials or not. My research is done using the point of view of the library users. Do they think libraries hold a sufficient amount of new age literature and do the users find this literature of good quality? To find an answer to this question, interviews have been made with a number of library users interested in new age related issues. Interviews have also been made with librarians, to get their point of view on this rather controversial subject.

The purpose of this thesis is to discuss the possibilities of, and interest in, a digital download service at the music departments of the libraries. I chose to conduct my study at the city library of Gothenburg. I studied the legal download services that exist today and I did a statistical survey among the users of the music department, followed up by interviews to see how they took to the idea. From the inquiry I learned that a majority of the users was negative to having a digital service replacing the physical department, although a majority was positive to try a digital service. I also used the inquiry to compare the reasons for downloading music to the reasons for borrowing records from the library, but there was no significant difference.

This thesis examines the subject of reference interviews and the ways librarians form an opinion of users information needs. Using literature and interviews with three librarians I look at the questions below: - Why and when are reference interviews needed? - What significance do they have? - What ideas exist about the performance of reference interviews? - Are there any differences in librarians views of the questions above compared to views in the literature? Results from literature studies and interviews show that reference interviews can be important when librarians try to find out more about users information needs. However its neither necessary nor possible to analyse all reference questions. Librarians therefore need to determine if a reference interview is needed or not.