This study aims mainly to investigate what kind of role the public library plays in the regional and local development. The aim is also to investigate how the public library can strengthen the role as a factor of regional and local development. To explore the subject, the study is focused on the Swedish region of Västra Götaland. Three officials along with two policy documents, are included in the study as representatives of the region. Four public library managers are also interviewed but as representatives of the local perspective.

The aim of this study is to examine how librarians experience implementations of changes in the physical space of the public library. The study seeks to answer the following questions from the librarians? perspective: What are the underlying reasons for changes in the physical space of the library? What are the important functions of the public library to the community residents? What reactions do librarians get from community residents after changes in the physical space of the public library? The study is based on semi-structured interviews with librarians working at seven small public libraries in Sweden. A model of four library spaces, which was developed by Andersson and Skot-Hansen in 1994 and refined in 2012, is used as a theoretical framework to help analyzing the results. The majority of the libraries are structured according to the older version of the model.

The aim of this Bachelor?s thesis is to investigate the public librarian?s professional identity and its relation to the public library as an experience centre. The development of the library as an experience centre raises questions about how public librarians understand their professional identity, and about their motives for working with activities like workshops and qigong, activities that have no significant connection with the librarian?s traditional tasks. The data was collected via semi-structured interviews exploring the perspectives and points of view of four public librarians.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to understand public library users' perceptions of librarians' attitudes to users and professional knowledge. The purpose was also to investigate the relative importance to the user of pleasant or a knowledgeable librarian. As a theoretical framework we use theory from business economy where the experience of the user is in focus. Answers were sought to the following questions: How do users perceive librarians attitudes to users? How do users perceive librarians professional knowledge? How do users want to be treated by public librarians? What kind of knowledge should public librarians have, according to users? We interviewed twelve students in university education that are users of public libraries.

This Master thesis studies how a diversified institutional care organisation can optimise its collective knowledge resources so to manage and distribute this knowledge to different parts of the organisation with help of the organisations intranet. The purpose of the study is to examine if knowledge management and the organisations intranet can be used to create, store, transfer and better use the knowledge within the organisation. Through a case study the thesis will look at different knowledge processes and their relation to the organisations intranet. The case study includes a questionnaire for the whole organisation and qualitative interviews with seven persons from different levels of the organisation. The theoretical framework of the study approaches knowledge management and intranet through four knowledge processes.

A new line of business has arisen on the Swedish information market. The information broker is still quite an unknown actor but the future seems to hold a prosperous outcome for this kind of alternative information service. The information broker has many definitions but can generally be described as an intermediary between information sources and users. The Swedish market for this kind of information professionals has not yet developed into a big, well-established and lucrative branch as for example the one in the USA. The Swedish actors are still coping with resistance in form of insufficient support from the government, competitiveness from other more established information services and the clienteles lack of understanding the brokers purpose and utility.

The aim with this master?s thesis is to examine the information practices and information literacies among social workers in the field of the social services and in the work with child welfare investigations. This is in this study related to their ambition to fulfill the requirements of an evidence-based practice. On a theoretical level, the study is based on three theories grounded in the idea of situated learning and of human activities based in a social context. These are the sociocultural theory, the theory of communities of practices and the theory of information practices.

This thesis presents a new way of providing library users with reference services, namely chat (text based digital reference service in real time). Our research questions focus on the role of reference service, a comparison of chat reference to other reference forms, and the interest for real-time, digital reference. Our literature review covered the areas of digital reference and reference theory, the results of which showed that an ongoing debate hardly exists among Swedish librarians on the topic of reference work. We interviewed librarians from the three different Swedish chat reference projects existing at the time of our study. Most interviewees were very positive about chat reference.

In this masters paper the change that Lidköping public library went through between 1952 and 1959 is described and analysed. The aim is to describe and analyse the reactions that arose at the time that the first professional librarian, Jörgen Elgström, acted to create a modern public library in the town. The issues that are handled are: How did the local politicians and the general public react to the process of change that was started by Jörgen Elgström? What were the consequences for the staff, the premises, lending, child and youth activities? The paper is concentrated around the period 1952-1959 because this is the time when Jörgen Elgström was working in Lidköping. Jörgen Elgström has a central role in the paper.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the handling and shelving of graphic novels and adult-comics in Swedish public libraries, in order to find out if this type of literature is prioritized in the same way as other forms of literature. The study was conducted by photographing the Hci/uHci shelves at ten different public libraries to give an objective view of the shelving to later be analysed and compared. Inquiry sheets were sent to the photographed libraries in order to get the librarians view of their own comic book shelves and collections. We found that the state of the comic-shelves differed from library to library according to how interested and committed the librarians were. New research areas in the field of Library and Information Science are discussed and questions are raised about the future of graphic novels and adult-comic-books in libraries, about their place in the libraries and about how librarians and the users knowledge of this media can be improved..

This essay was to investigate what self-image public libraries convey on Facebook and what image is received by the users, along with comparison of those. It was investigated if the received image corresponded with the users? previous image of public libraries. The method used was interviews with the Facebook administrators and surveys with the users. The theoretical framework was Kotler?s model for image creation.The research is mainly American and shows Facebook as an accepted marketing tool for libraries among students, but as not taken seriously by the library staff.

Information is one of the organization's essential resources, and as such it needs strategic management. The authors use the information audit, which was developed by Orna 1999 and Henczel 2000 as a tool to evaluate how well an organization's information activities connect to its mission, goals, and objectives, to evaluate the municipal politicians' information support in Härryda municipality. The decision situations met by politicians often are complex; they are ambiguous and unstructured, with a high level of uncertainty. Human information sources meet needs arising in this kind of decision situations best. Since most of the politicians work full-time besides being politicians, Härryda municipality has to substitute the human sources by textual ones composed of highly summarized information.

Traditionally, the majority of Swedish public libraries have carried out most of their acquisitions through Bibliotekstjänst's binding booklets. In recent years, however, many libraries have complemented the binding booklets and other services from Bibliotekstjänst by other ways of acquiring books, such as Internet bookshops, while other libraries have stopped using the binding booklets altogether. There are various reasons for this development, such as Information Technology making it possible for librarians to compare prizes and services from different retailers. Another important reason is the need for public libraries to meet new needs from their patrons, while remaining on a restrained budget, which often causes a need for reorganization of staff and resources.As a way of meeting the new needs for libraries, Bibliotekstjänst has created Profile Services (profiltjänster), a service in which a library outsources its acquisitions to Bibliotekstjänst. The staff of the library, in dialogue with Bibliotekstjänst, design a profile for the acquisitions for the library in question, in order to determinate which types and genres of literature the library and its patrons are requesting.

The aim of this thesis is to examine whether the youth section, named ?Young adults?, in the library in our study is justified or not. We will do this by examining connections between society?s and the library?s views on youth and youth culture. In our study we examine the purpose of the young adult-department and which measures are taken to reach the purposes.

Title: Development and continuity: A new institutional case study of a Danish public library in changeAbstract: The purpose of this master's thesis is to discuss and analyse the relationship between the traditional core values belonging to the institution of the public library, and the development work that takes place at the institution. The thesis also investigates the relationships that influence the development work.By investigating a library that is considered progressive in its development work, our purpose is also to unveil alternative values that compete with the traditional core values. By illustrating the perception among seven staff members and the director at Aarhus Public Libraries, we want to illuminate the terms for development among public libraries. In addition to our interviews, an activity plan is studied.We base our study on new institutional theory which focuses on norms and values in an organisation. This focus helps us to understand the development work from a comprehensive view.Our study shows that the development work at Aarhus Public Libraries is taking place in a complex environment that consists of several different actors and different interpretationsof the traditional core values of public libraries.