This thesis treats lending figures of literature on religion at libraries in Vårgårda and Lerum.Formulated hypotheses are: The use of literature on religion is higher at the Library in Vårgårdathan at the one in Lerum; In Lerum the most literature on religion is used by highly educatedpeople; Ethnic groups and librarians have an influence on the stock.The Christian literature has other patterns than other literature regarding selection criteria,reviews and distribution. The conclusions are: The fact that there are many members ofChurch and Chapel in Vårgårda, does reflect the number of loans of literature on religion in apositive way; Education does not influence, but distance between school and Library; Thelibrarians' interest and therefore knowledge regarding religious topics has an impact on theirtreatment of religious books, while ethnic groups do not effect stock and use in either Vårgårdaor Lerum..

This bachelor thesis examines the activities and values associated with automation and technical development at four Swedish research libraries. It does so by applying textual analysis to annual reports and job advertisements from the respective libraries. The study also questions whether some assumptions of automation have changed or remain over time, and includes a short historical discussion in relation to the contemporary analysis. As an added perspective it introduces the methods and philosophies of French sociologist Bruno Latour. The author reflects on the merits of Latour in research of Library automation.

The view on which kind of fiction that should be mediated to the public through the Swedish public Library system has since the late 60´s been dominated by what in this Master?s thesis is called: ´the discourse on quality of literary fiction´. The aim of this thesis is to examine to which extent this discourse still plays an active role in the Swedish public Library system or if that discourse has been replaced by a more market-led, demand responsive view, where the features of ´quality´ and ´culture´ have been downplayed and replaced by a ´customer?s service view´ on how and why fiction should be mediated to the public. The methodological and theoretical perspective in this thesis is led by the understanding of the discourse analysis in Michel Foucault?s ´The Archaeology of Knowledge´.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of this thesis is to study the phenomenon of read/write OPAC by looking at how students at Pennsylvania University use PennTags in order to influence document descriptions in the Library catalogue. The main questions to be answered are to what extent PennTags is being used in different subject areas and what users contribute to document descriptions through tagging in different subject areas. Studying the posts created by a sample of PennTags users from a quantitative approach I try to find out if there is reason to believe that the activity of users and users? possibility to make meaningful contributions are dependent of the subject matter being dealt with in documents described, as anticipated by the theory of pace layering. I find that user interest in influencing the Library catalogue through PennTags appears to be low in general, with exception for in the subject areas of the main classes Language and literature and Social sciences in Library of Congress Classification.

Public libraries have an important roll of making information accessible to all people. This democratic right supports the cultural development in our society. When public libraries build websites offering information and services it can sometimes cause obstacles for impaired users. It is therefore our purpose to evaluate a selection of websites and Library plans to examine how the libraries work with accessibility for these users. This thesis is based on theories of cognitive and human computer interaction, and information architecture.

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.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate and analyse how the concept of lifelong learning is expressed in political documents concerning public libraries and education and how it can be related to earlier concepts of education within the discourse of public libraries. Focus is the official approach to the concept of lifelong learning and public Library. The documents examined contain the political aims for education and culture policy on a national and local level. The theories used in the study concern the background and meaning of the concept of lifelong learning, they describe public libraries and their earlier perspectives of education and they also give a picture of practices of governing within the framework of public libraries. The purpose is to see how the speech in the documents is reflected in discourses of society and public Library.

The aim of this study is to gain knowledge about the internalcommunication at a public Library in Sweden, focusing on the flow of information and the Library employee?s role as a source and receiver. This is an important subject because internal communication affects not only the internal work, but also the users. Despite this there are few studies about internal communication in libraries. The research questions used are: How do the employees perceive the role as source of information, and what choices do they make before they spread information? How do the employees perceive the role as receiver of information? How do the employees feel that the information flow works in the organization as a whole?The research is founded on five qualitative semi-structured interviews with the Library employees.

The aim of this master thesis is to study how the development of a public Library by means of ideas and methods from the private sector can be related to traditional core values. We base our study on institutional theory, which focuses on norms and values in an organisation, and new institutional theory, which focuses on how organisations are influenced by changes in the environment. We also use New Public Management with a market focus to analyze the implications of a development towards a more market oriented view.The method used is that of a case study of a new Library concept, Idea Stores in London. Idea Stores are a number of new public libraries in Tower Hamlets developed from the results of a major opinion survey about libraries. The Idea Stores combine traditional Library services with elements of adult education and lifelong learning in a partnership with local learning centres.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to explore the image of the librarian from three groups: librarians, researchers and directors of staff from industrial companies. The purpose was also to study the image of the future librarian as the Swedish School of Library and Information Science at the University College of Borås introduces it. As my theoretical framework I used communication theories and marketing theories. I searched answers to the following questions: - Is there any resemblance at all between the common stereotypes of the librarian and the images given by the participants of the survey? - How do the librarians view themselves? - What is the image of the librarian among the researchers who use the services of the Library? - What is the image of the librarian among the directors of staff from the industrial companies? - What is the image of the librarian given by an educational institution during the basic education? I contacted the participants and asked them to draw a picture of a librarian and write a short text about the picture.

This master's thesis deals with how a school class of 19 students that are 12 years old,perceive the conception of the Library and its activities, and how this can be studied by usingfour different approaches: analysis of the children's drawings, analysis of the children'sessays and analysis of their answers to questions in an inquiry and in interviews. Theories ofhow children learn, develop and perceive the world are briefly presented, as we11 as theorynecessary for the analysis.The four different techniques produced in general the same result; the children displayed thesame thoughts, knowledge and values in the drawings, in the essays, in the inquiry andduring the interviews. The children participating look upon a Library as mainly a building,though sometimes also a room, where there are books..

Traditionally the content of fiction has not been described, analyzed, classified and/or indexed to the same extent as non-fiction. As a consequence, this lack of content analysis has resulted in unsatisfactory fiction retrieval in relation to users seeking and search behaviour. This fact is why this Master s thesis is written. The total of Library users' seeking and search behaviour is investigated in order to suggest methods to improve user adapted fiction retrieval tools. Suggesting relevant fiction retrieval tools corresponding to users' seeking/search behaviour is another aim of the study.

In an international perspective the Russian children s Library is a unique institution, being solely committed to children up to 14 years of age. In Russia of today it is, however, being exposed to hard pressure as the economical and social conditions have changed dramatically since the collapse of the USSR. My interest lies in examining this change of living conditions for the children s libraries and how this in turn affect their work and role in the present state. In order to view this change in a longer perspective, I compare the situation for children s libraries during the time of communist regime with that of today using documents about and from children s libraries. I have studied its legal position and conditions, financial and political state, and how the modern society affects children and youth, especially their daily cultural life.

This thesis will portray the different types of students at the programs of Library studiesin Lund and Umeå.The study is based upon quantitative information gathered from a survey, which wasdistributed to first-year students in Lund and Umeå. The survey was followed by qualitativeinterviews with four students, and with the director of studies from each school.The study shows that the programs, as we11 as the students, are very similar, althoughthere are some minor differences. It seemed that the students at Umeå were moreinterested in culture than those at Lund.A certain connection between the aim at information and the ownership of a computercould be detected. The sex of the students played a major part in their choice of education.The attractors and facilitators, used by Lortie in his study, could also be appliedto the students at the program of Library studies in our thesis..