This thesis investigates gender equality at a few Swedish elementary school libraries, and how school librarians at these libraries work with gender equality issues. It is a semi-structured interview study conducted with staff at seven elementary school libraries. Several policy documents state that the school should be a gender-equal environment, but previous research shows that there is still a lack of gender equality, and that staff often treat boys and girls differently. It also shows that boys and girls are often portrayed in a gender-stereotypical way in children?s literature.

The purpose of this two years master´s thesis in Archive, Library and Information Museum science is to examine the ideas about children and childhood which have an influence on the storytime at public libraries. The material on which this thesis is based, is a methodbook which is aimed to develop the storytimes and those picture books that are recommend in the methodbook. The theoretical points of departure are discourse analysis and childhood sociology. The concepts of being and becoming are frequently used when analyzing the methodbook. Other theoretical points of departure are the combination of narratologi, semiotics and hermeneutics, which are also used when analyzing the picture books.The result indicates that the storytime, recommended in the methodbook, is based on the idea of a timeless culture of childhood - where the "modern child" including the media used today - is left out. Concepts as nostalgia and pedagogy are tightly connected.

This masters thesis concerns three different types of cataloguing within three different memory institutions museums, archives and libraries. The focus lies on the cataloguing elements which are compared in order to illuminate similarities and differences. The Regional Archive and The National Museum of World Cultures - both in Gothenburg - were chosen and compared to KRS, the Swedish counterpart to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, AACR2, 2: nd ed. The purpose of this comparison is partly to display the elements in order to make students disciplines, but also the staff within archives, libraries and museums to become conscious of each others cataloguing methods in regard to future cooperations within the memory institutions and to see if it is possible to create common cataloguing rules for archives, libraries and museums. The questions asked in this thesis are: 1.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how libraries use thetools and ideas from library 2.0 in their reading promotionwork. We also want to include how librarians motivate thisuse and whatever merits and faults they encounter. We haveperformed document studies and interviews which we thenanalyzed with qualitative content analysis. Our theoreticframework in this study which we also used as a part of ourcoding scheme in the analysis was a model over the conceptlibrary 2.0 developed by Holmberg, Huvila, Kronquist-Bergand Widén-Wulff. This model describes seven aspects oflibrary 2.0 which is users, participation, library and libraryservice, web and web 2.0, social aspects, technology andinteractivity.

This masters thesis concerns the Public Library Service in Eastern Africa, Tanzania. Our subject was developed through a feasibility study that gave us comprehension that developing countries have individual problems concerning books and libraries. We understood that the main problems were the libraries financial situation and their dependence on aid. We also understood that the libraries do not have the resources to satisfy the society as a whole. The major questions raised in this study are: - How do the regional librarians describe their work situation? -Which role do the Regional Librarians have in society? Data was collected through interviews and observation, and the study is a qualitative case study.

In 2010 there will be a political resolution to ensure that the Swedish society is accessible to all citizens including people with disabilities. For this purpose a national action plan for disability policy "From patient to citizen" (Govt. Bill 1999/2000:79) has been set out with the aim of ensuring that the disability perspective will permeate every sector of society and that the approach and response to people with disabilities will be improved. The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs is responsible for implementing the disability policy in the cultural sector.Since public libraries in Sweden are a part of the public cultural sector, they will also be affected by the political resolution regarding accessibility. The concept underpinning library services for disabled people must be that of equality of access.

The object of this master thesis was to examine the significance of fairy tales for children and the extent which children today are able to share fairy tales through the activity of the libraries. The main question was: how current were fairy tales at the investigated libraries activity for children and how current were fairy tales in todays book publication? The qualitative methods used were in the form of interviews, statistics and source studies. The theoretical literature in this thesis described the folkloristic context of the fairy tales. There was also a psychological and a pedagogical view of the possibility of the fairy tales.

This is a study on the electronic reference work of some Swedish university and university college libraries. The purpose of the study has been to find out how the service works at the different libraries, to study the electronic reference interview and to find what is important when you start a new electronic reference service in the light of Brenda Dervin's sense-making theory study. Furthermore, we examine the aims of the electronic services offered and the differences between electronic and traditional reference interviews. In the background to the study we place electronic reference services in a context by describing the role of information technology and electronic mail in the libraries. The electronic reference interview is studied with the help of literature on the traditional reference interview.

This bachelor's purpose is to examine different types of library work directed at theSwedish national Jewish and Romani minorities. The thesis will begin with accounting for thepolitics of Swedish national minorities and of today?s situation for Jews and Romanis in Sweden.We will, to accomplish this purpose, use a three-piece question formulation regarding therespective works of the libraries, as well as the possible benefits that cooperation betweendifferent libraries could bring. The questions are answered in the analysis of four qualitativeinterviews through a model based on Dorte Skot-Hansen's thoughts on the library's different rolesin different understandings of society. The analysis will lead us to a final discussion, in which wewill present our results: that distinct guidelines regarding the national minorities for the publiclibraries are a necessity for Sweden?s fulfilling of the responsibility towards these groups; thatthere is a need for a coordination of the propositions and conventions regarding the nationalminorities in the shape of a substantial legislation; and that this field in the future needs to bethoroughly observed and examined in order to evaluate how the Swedish public libraries meet the needs of the national minorities..

Care and solicitude about Swedish documentary heritage has varied substantially throughout the years. The main purpose of this essay has been to investigate what efforts have been made to preserve rare book collections at public libraries. These cultural policies have been studied from both a national as well as local perspective. What we have tried to explore can be condensed into three questions: What national initiatives have been taken in the past century to preserve the municipal documentary heritage?What initiatives have been taken in the past century to preserve thedocumentary heritage of what is presently the municipality of Jönköping? What value do rare book collections at public libraries represent? The results indicate few national efforts were initially made to preserve rare book collections in the timeframe we studied.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the relationship between the surrounding world and the library with respect to the library?s need to provide a Library 2.0 web site. We also explore the relationship between the physical and the virtual library. Our research objects are the public libraries of Stockholm and the Umeå region, that maintain the web sites Biblioteket.se and minabibliotek.se respectively. By applying Dorte Skot-Hansen's theory of rationales we found that the Stockholm public library is acting in accordance with the experience rationale, whereas the libraries of Umeå are influenced by the instrumental rationale.

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.

This two year master thesis reviews the possibilities for how public libraries and geriatric care can cooperate on a long-term basis. By using a project called Prosit the study shows which approaches and actions that worked in order to create this kind of successful collaboration, and which ones that didn't.The theoretical framework consists of the sociocultural perspective developed by psychologist Roger Säljö in meaning to emphasize how these two departments can learn from each other. The theory also underlines the fact that both public libraries and geriatric care can develop their own way of improving the elderly?s daily life by working together. The thesis method is qualitative and based on Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke?s thematic analysis.

The theme of this essay is the principle of free access to the Swedish Public Libraries, and its aim is to fmd out the opinion of adult visitors of such libraries as regards the introduction of fees on the borrowing of books, already existing fees such as reservation fees, charges for interlibrary loans and charges for the late return of books.The main part of our survey comprises questionnaires that were handed out to 100 visitors at the Norrkoping City Library and 100 visitors at the Eskilstuna City and Provincial Library. In order to illustrate the fee problem from another angle, interviews with staff people from the two libraries were carried out A large part of the essay consists of material aiming to give a general picture of the subject, e.g. how the "free of charge principle" is tied to the Swedish library system, what arguments have been presented to maintain or reverse this principle, and a comparison of the relative situation in other countries. As the conception of popular education is so basic for the "free of charge principle", we also account for the idea of popular education.The result of our questionnaire shows, among other things, that 60,9% cannot consider paying for any of the free services offer by the libraries today, 21,3% answered that they could possibly consider paying for some of the services and 17,8% answered that they didn't know. 76% would rather pay for a library card than stop borrowing books altogether..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether or not the publiclibraries under review can make use of Frans Melin?s strategicbranding platform to create or strengthen their brands by meansof their programme activities. The study addresses two issues;how are the programme activities relevant to the way librariescan work with their brands, and what potential do these librarieshave to create and/or reinforce their brands through programmeactivities?The empirical material has been obtained through qualitativeinterviews structured around Melin?s platform. This has alsobeen used to discuss and analyse the results.