The aim of this master´s thesis is to analyse what factors have an impact on the quality of school libraries. The research questions are: How do some school principals, school librarians and school inspectors view quality in school libraries and what has an impact on quality?How do they view some existing quality criteria?How important do they think the integration of the school library into the curriculum is?The theoretical approach is derived from research about school libraries by David Loertscher and by Sharon Markless and David Streatfield. The empirical material has been collected through half structured qualitative interviews. The informants chosen are principals and school librarians from three Swedish primary schools (6-15 years).

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine the process of selecting films at Bibliotekstjänst and at Swedish public libraries. The tools that have been used for analysing and interpreting the results from the interviews and the questionnaire are theory-based models describing the selection process concerning film and Carl Gustav Johannsen?s quality definitions. The result of the investigation shows that Bibliotekstjänst doesn?t really work with any quality definitions in their selection process.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the attitudes of deaf and hear-impaired people towards libraries, information, and culture. The issues are: What are the attitudes of the informants towards libraries and culture? What do reference group theory and the theory of information access-/avoidance implicate concerning the information behaviour of the informants? In-depth interviews with five deaf and hear-impaired university students have been carried out in this qualitative study. The world of deaf and hear-impaired people is presented as well as a survey of political guidelines to make, for example, libraries and theatres more available to disabled people. The research overview analyses scholarly studies on deaf and hear-impaired people.

The main purpose of this thesis has been to investigate librarians opinions about the need for and possibility to use non-roman script in library catalogues. We have also investigated the routines of handling materials in non-roman scripts in two Swedish libraries. The investigation was made in the light of the recent shift in character set in the Swedish National Library Catalogue Libris. This change will enable use of multiple writing systems in the future.Our findings are that a multicultural society requires special consideration to the needs of citizens who speak other languages than the majority of the population. This becomes difficult when the languages spoken have a different writing system than the one used by the majority.

This study focuses on the Nordic model of Extended Collective Licenses (ECL) and how this model can be used in the process of digitalising and publishing archival material such as photos, letters, maps or films. The question that this study aims to deal with is what advantages, and disadvantages, there are for archives and copyright holders when an ECL is being used. To help answering this question the ?theory of the knowledge commons? has been applied. The research question has been answered through a text analysis based on legal texts including Swedish law.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine librarian's opinion of computer filters, to bring order in the debate on these filters and also to encourage future debate on this subject. The main problem is whether librarians themselves think they have the right to limit the public access to information on the Internet by using computer filters. We will also see how many public libraries are using filters, why they have chosen to use or not to use them, what is the librarians' opinion of filters, what rules exist regarding the use of the Internet, and finally if it is legal to use filter programs in public libraries. We have also included a short report on what filters are and how they work. This paper deals only with Swedish conditions on a number of public libraries.

The research of this Masters thesis examines if during a specific period of time, Environmental scanning connected to Swedish public libraries is discussed in journals that are directly connected to the field of Swedish libraries. The method employed was content analysis of articles, news items and ads with the intention of finding out the extent of Environmental scanning and who carries it out and how and what is scanned. The research covers the period from 2004-01-01 to 2004-08-31. During the research period 1387 articles, news items and ads were analyzed. The study focuses on 81 selected published units that directly include references or discussion about Environmental scanning.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the debate in Swedish library press concerning privatization of public libraries. The aim of the thesis stems from a desire to know whether Swedish librarians, as has been alleged in contemporary right wing debate, are politically biased and adherents of socialism. The debate is analysed using the method of idea and ideology analysis, using the tool of ideal types of the ideologies socialism and neo- liberalism. As material I have chosen articles from the magazines Biblioteksbladet and DIK Forum, from the years 1989 to 2010. The reason for choosing the topic of privatization is that it is a controversial question and a topic one could expect to generate a heated debate.Four positions can be discerned in the debate.

This masters thesis aims to explore the branch libraries in Kalmar municipality and their relation to the Information and communication technology ICTsociety. How do they adapt to and assimilate with, the ICT-society? What are their roles in local social networks and do they make a difference there? To answer these questions, critical discourse analysis, CDA, as founded by Norman Fairclough is applied to four interwievs with branch library managers. Other theorists used are Michel Foucault, Chaïm Perelman and Ludwig Wittgenstein. A solid description of todays society on different levels is also given.

The purpose of this master thesis is to examine the opinion about school libraries among principals at the independent schools in the municipality of Lund. In order to fulfil my purpose I used a qualitative method with an introductory questionnaire, which gave background material to the interviews. All seven principals answered the questionnaire and five of them agreed to participate in an interview. Another two interviews were made with two informants, this material was included in the background material. As theoretical framework I have used literature about the school library development, the role of the principal for development and David V.

This master thesis examines the copyright law with the purpose of sorting out the consequences and the effects of the law impacted on libraries. The theories used are mainly discourse analysis and public domain theory. At the centre of the examination is the effects that copyright law bring to libraries and their ability to perform their work. A major part of this thesis is gathered around the analysis of the presumptive key words that give the structures of copyright law the possibility to claim rightfulness. This is an outspoken strategy to illustrate the discourse of copyright law.

This Master's thesis concerns the classification of compact discs according to the Swedish classification system, SAB. The purpose of this thesis is to critically study and discuss category Y of the SAB-system and its application in Swedish public libraries. The classification system has undergone great changes from the first edition in 1921 until today. In 1921 there were no musical recordings in Swedish libraries, today they are responsible for a large part of the loans. We discuss how the system's category Y has corresponded with the musical development.

The purpose of this study is to investigate librarian?s opinions concerning literature with state supported distribution and how to mediate and market these in the library. The types of mediation and marketing that have been studied are positioning, labeling and oral mediation.The study is qualitative with interviews at seven main public libraries in central Sweden. The respondents of the study were responsible for the literature with state supported distribution within the library.The study is based on a theoretical frame of reference containing theories from Jofrid Karner Smidt, regarding librarian?s mediation in libraries, and François Colbert?s theory on marketing planning for arts and culture.The results of our study showed that librarians have both positive and negative opinions when it comes to the literature with state supported distribution.

The goal of this Master?s thesis is to explore the approach and general attitude of public libraries regarding Sign Language Literature. There is a need to study and advance how the deaf can find ways to read in their own language, as it is as important to them to be able to read in their language, as it is to the next hearing person. The purpose is to define and explain the full capacity of the problem. In the process of research, by investigating how library staff approaches and deal with deaf patrons, the nature of the patron-staff relationship is revealed.