The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine attitudes and standpoints amongst librarians at the Swedish public library towards literary awards and awarded literature. The questions posed in the study are: What attitudes are expressed amongst these librarians towards the Nobel Prize in literature, the August Prize and literary awards and awarded literature in general? What significance do the Nobel Prize in literature, the August Prize and other literary awards have concerning purchase and display at these public libraries? How is awarded literature perceived and how do they talk about it concerning quality and are questions of quality significant? Qualitative interviews with seven librarians at four different public libraries have been done. Theories regarding J?rgen Habermas the bourgeois public sphere and Pierre Bourdieu?s terms habitus, field and capital have been used as to explain the library as a public sphere.

This thesis is about a potential trade-off between integrity and long-term usability in the choice of file formats for preservation of text documents. Five common formats are discussed: plain text, PDF/A, Office Open XML Document, Open Document Text, and Markdown. The formats are compared with respect to four criteria related to integrity and usability and to the records continuum model: support by widely used software, stability, rendering of contents and reusability.It is concluded that no single format is optimal with respect to all four criteria, when it comes to preserving typical documents in a modern environment, with more or less complex formatting and document structure. Therefore, the feasiblity of using two or more formats for preservation of a single document (e.g. PDF/A combined with Markdown and/or Office Open XML) is discussed.

The office is the working environment in which an increasing proportion of the population spends their days . One type of office are open plan offices which are characterized by several people sitting together in the same room without spatial boundaries . The general discourse of this kind of offices is that they constitute an advantageous design that allows organizational changes without the need for redevelopment . From a work perspective, this office design is both criticized and acclaimed . Problems with noise is frequently reported in research which can lead to ill health.

This dissertation discusses head librarians in Swedish public libraries and the stress factors which affect them. The aim is to map out potential stress factors which head librarians come across in their day-to-day work. The purpose of the dissertation is to answer the following question: what stress factors affect library managers in Swedish public libraries? The dissertation was conducted through a literature study, informal interviews and a quantitative questionnaire. The results of the quantitative questionnaires show that the factor that produces the highest level of stress is having too many different tasks.

The aim of the paper is to examine how public libraries can develop their services for children with ethnic minority backgrounds as a user group. This is achieved through studying the conditions for library services provided for children aged 9-12 in this group by public libraries in suburbs densely populated with ethnic minorities. The paper uses both a literature review and empirical research on the community libraries in Rinkeby and Rosengård as well as the town library in Lund. Services potentially available to these groups are analysed and discussed in the later chapters. The overall conclusion is that those services provided for ethnic minority children are largely the same as those provided for in children library services in general.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the view on the personal encounter between staff and visitors in public libraries in order to detect possible differences between the two groups in order to see if the personal encounter as such could be used in order to market libraries. We believe that social competence must interact with the initial personal encounter in order for the visitor to experience the visit as positive. We have based the theoretical framework on Erving Goffman?s theory on social interaction, as well as on Christian Grönroos? theory on quality of service and marketing. We use the following questions: How do library staff view the personal encounter? How do library visitors view the personal encounter? How does the library staff?s treatment affect the visitor?s view of the library?Are there any differences in view between visitors and staff concerning the personal encounter? If so, what kind of differences are they? Using qualitative interviews, we have interviewed nine visitors and six staff members at two public libraries.

The following thesis concerns the conceptualization of openness within the open access movement. Open accesscan be understood as a phenomenon or a movement that aims at changing the current system of scholarly communication.Consequentially, the movements goals arose in relation to the escalating serials crisis in scholarly communicationand the increasing power of commercial publishers. The purpose of the thesis is to study three centralopen access declarations with the aim of uncovering the different conceptualizations of openness found withinthese texts. Leaning on the theoretical position known as actor-network theory, the declarations role within a surroundingnetwork is explored by focusing on how openness as a concept has been produced and reproduced bycentral actors. Two overarching questions frames the study: How is openness conceptualized within the declarations?And how can openness, as a concept, be understood as an effect generated by a larger network?The first part of the study focuses on the first question.

Denna uppsats behandlar en undersökning som gjordes efter det att en gymnasieskola i Örebro migrerat från Microsoft Office till Open Office. I studien undersöktes vilka för och nackdelar som lärare upplevde efter migrationen samt vilka problem som uppstod då öppen mjukvara används i en miljö som är dominerad av proprietär mjukvara.Det tillvägagångssätt vi valt är en metodtriangulering där vi samlat in data med hjälp av tre olika insamlingsmetoder, en litteraturstudie, kvalitativa intervjuer och en kvantitativ enkät. Dessa insamlingsmetoder utformades så att litteraturstudien var av bredare karaktär och leder till att intervjuerna blir av mer specifik karaktär som i sin tur ger oss kvantitativa frågor till enkäten.Det vi funnit under arbetets gång är att migrationen lett till interoperabilitetsproblem med existerande proprietära system och även att filer tolkats olika av de båda kontorspaketen. Lärarna såg större skillnader mellan de båda kontorspaketen är vad skolan och kommunen förutsett och tyckte att de mer avancerade funktionerna är svårare att använda i Open Office vi har även sett en efterfrågan utbildning..

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the presences of open-ended problems in the textbooks of high school Mathematics A. For practical reasons the study was limited to three textbooks and two topics, Fractions and Area & Volume. The Essay also describes the theory behind open-ended problems and why they should be used. I identify three criteria as a definition for open-ended problems. The study found that only 7,6% of the investigated tasks qualified, and met at least 1 criterion.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe how principals apprehend the school library. In order to respond to this I formulated three questions: How was the improvement of the school libraries carried out in one municipality? Is the school library experienced as a part of the schools organization? How is the use of the school´s library experienced? To be able to answer these questions, for the purpose of this thesis, I have studied relevant literature on school libraries, the school organization and literature on qualitative methods. I have made six qualitative interviews. The objects of the interviews were three librarians and three principals.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to present an overviewof a number of libraries? specially adapted media forchildren with special needs.We also wanted to see how the librarians worked to helpchildren with special needs, to take advantage of the librariescollections and activities. These special needs could bedyslexia but may also be disabilities which have resulted inthem being unable to read literature other than specialadapted literature. Examples of this literature are DAISY,book & DAISY, pictogram, bliss, ISAAC, easy reading,Braille, tactile picture books, and computer programs thatmake it easier for people to read in their own way with theirown skills.Using qualitative interviews we have interviewed sevenlibrarians. Through this process we have been able toascertain which methods public libraries use to meet theneeds of those children whose disabilities relate to reading.The interviews also explored how they are working withchildren who need more time than other children does whenit comes to reading.The results of the interviews showed that the librariesprovided a lot of special adapted media.

When the Tranemo library moved to new localities in 1991 there were also some changes made to make the library more user-friendly. The purpose of this essay is to see how a useroriented change can be done and how it has been perceived by members of the library staff and the library users.This is done by the following means:l) interviews with members of the library staff,2) a questionnaire to the users in Tranemo,3) a comparative questionnaire to users of the libraries in Skara and Lerum.The comparison was concentrated on how the library presents its material. The result of this comparison shows that even though there is a difference among the three libraries, the difference is small and it is impossible to say for sure that it has anything to do with the changes that have been done. The interviews and questionnaire in Tranemo give a positive picture of that library..

The purpose of this thesis was to find out whether the main class C (religion) in the Swedish classification system Klassifikationssystem för svenska bibliotek is well adapted to classify materials published in or imported to Sweden, and handled by Swedish libraries today. The questions we put to ourselves were:1. How easy to understand, and how useful is the main class C religion today?2. What, in the main class C, is satisfactory?3. What, in the main class C, is inconsistent, anachronistic or incorrect?4. What, in the main class C, is in need of change or renewal?The method that was used was a number of interviews with librarians and cataloguers. We have interviewed eight librarians from six different libraries, of different types, but all with a relatively large collection of religious materials.Though all of our respondents have expressed a feeling that all the major religions deserve equal treatment in the classification system and a similar division of space, after some pondering on the subject, our respondents have agreed that a larger space for Christianity is warranted considering the composition of the current collections and publication. Our respondents have in some cases expressed that there is a lack of instructions as to how the subdivisions of the main class C (religion) is meant to be used.

This Master?s thesis is about the public library development in a rural district, in this case Bergunda, a large rural district in Kronoberg?s County in Småland in Sweden, existing 1952 ? 1970. The main question is; how the public library develops in Bergunda large rural district 1951-1970. The main question is divided up in sub-questions: the district uniting in 1952 and 1971; personnel; lending; library housing and the public library structure. In 1952, there is one public library, Bergunda public library, and four study circle libraries.

The main purpose of this thesis was to examine the collection management at five different hospital libraries´ children and youth?s section to discern different roles of the collections. We made qualitative interviews with five hospital librarians. The purpose was also to see how the collection development affected the different roles of the collections. We used two theories.