The rapid change within digital medias has increased the possibilities to make information accessible through network. Therefore the European Union EU considers a harmonization within the Union, in order to strengthen the rights of the originator. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how the EUs directive 2001/29/EG regarding copyright is to be implemented into Swedish legislation and assess the common opinion in the public libraries on this matter. The basic methodology of this thesis is a democratic perspective, concerning the public libraries democratic role and the right of the citizens to have access to information. The thesis first part is a study of documents.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to study the organisational culture of two public libraries managed differently. One of the libraries in my study is run by the local bookstore and the other is run by a staff co-operative. My aim is to elucidate characteristic features in the culture of these two public library organisations. The questions I posed are which types of organisation culture can be identified in the two given examples and what the factors are that may be of importance for these cultures.

The aim of the study was to examine how the public libraries participate in the integration of immigrants in the Malmö-/Lund region. Librarians and immigrants were interviewed about the services offered by the libraries in the area of multiculturalism and what kind of service that is requested by the immigrants. The interviews also included possibilities to contribute to increased knowledge among the native Swedish people about different cultures represented among immigrants in Sweden. From the qualitative analyses it is concluded that the libraries represented in the study contribute to the integration of immigrants. The respondents gave multiple examples of the libraries? usefulness in the integration process by offering immigrants possibilities to develop their knowledge in the Swedish language, and also to find information about the Swedish society and culture.

The purpose of this Master`s thesis is to examine if the pur-chase of media in public libraries reflects the library's role in society. Two questions have been posed: ? What view of public library's role in society is reflected in the purchase of media? ? What principles guide the selection of media in public li-braries in Sweden? In order to investigate these questions, we used a question-naire that we sent out to a sample of 120 public libraries in Sweden. The analysis is based on a theory of three ap-proaches to the role of the library developed by Douglas Raber. The three approaches are the conservative approach, the populist approach and the social approach.

The purpose of this Bachelor?s thesis is twofold. Firstly it aims to make a contribution to the understanding of how five Swedish Diocesan libraries have carried out the digitizing of their rare book and manuscript collections. Problem areas related to this activity are also investigated. Secondly, it aims to examine the relative guidelines and standardization norms, which have been formulated on a national basis.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the historical use of "poison cabinets", or restricted shelves, in Swedish libraries. Drawing upon the theories of Mary Douglas and Michel Foucault, it also seeks to sketch a cultural and ideological context of the practice; with the emphasis on social or mental hygiene, and disciplinary aspects. Through qualitative interviews as well as digitalized recordings of librarians active during the first half of the 20th century, actual examples of poison cabinets are presented. A closer examination is conducted of past collections at Lund University Library, and two large public libraries situated in Växjö and Sigtuna. The essay also investigates views on library censorship, controversial literature, and other related subjects reflected in th elibrary press during the period 1916-1979.

The intention of this essay is to describe the problems with loss of books at three Swedish University libraries. It?s based on interviews with librarians. The library codes of ethics, the library law and the terms of reference of the libraries are central for my understanding. Interview results: Little was being done to stop theft.

The aim of this study is to look at censorship and attempted censorship of books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) people in public libraries in the USA. People from the public can submit formal challenges to a book at the library when they find the material offensive which can lead to those books being taken away from the library shelves. The questions asked are why GLBT- literature is being challenged, and sometimes banned, and how do the libraries deal with the challenges to the books.It is nowadays the people from the public, rather than the government or the librarians that are behind many cases of removal of books with homosexual themes. The study presents some of the fictional GLBT- literature that has been cause for much controversy in the USA. All the five examples mentioned are children?s books concerning GLBT- themes and are among the most challenged books in American libraries in the past twenty years.

In a web environment the library and the librarian continue to function in their role as information provider even when the physical library is closed. Research question is to describe how and in what extent the public libraries websites are integrated in their daily activity and what the causes are for that. The empirical material consists of a survey of number of public libraries websites and qualitative interviews with responsible librarians. I have delimited the study by only investigating the websites of Gothenburg public libraries. In my survey of the websites I have studied four spheres; Services, Contact, Structure and General viewpoints.

Integration projects at two libraries: multiculture, meetings and possibilities takes its start in the fact that Sweden is populated with people from many different nations. The libraries have a unique possibility to arrange integration projects as a supplier of culture and information. This case study focuses on two integration projects arranged by two libraries; the library of Jönköping with the project Brobyggarbiblioteken, and the library of Kortedala which was involved in the project Ordbron. My purpose is to find out how these two libraries chose to work with integration, migrants and multiculture. The aim is to examine if the library could function as a passway to the Swedish society, and to find out if the library can facilitate for migrants to maintain contact with their native country.

The starting point for this study is the situation for immigrants during the process of integration. This study aims to describe and discuss, with a broad approach, if certain information needs arises when immigrants meet the Swedish labour market and in such a case, do they use the library and how does the public libraries meet those needs. A secondary aim is to help increase the understanding of immigrants and forming a basis for further efforts by the libraries to improve services for immigrants and point at areas where there is a need for further research. - Which expectations and demands meets immigrants on the labour market and which library needs are possibly generated by this? - What services and range of material do the libraries offer immigrants and how are they marketed at the libraries homepages on the Internet? - Do immigrants from outside the western culture use the library and in that case how? Swedish human capital and Swedish social capability are identified as demands that are often held by operators on the labour market.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how comics, here defined as a combination of text and images, are handled by the libraries in regards to subject analysis, classification and indexing. A comparative approach has been used in this study. First, common practices, methods and theories concerning subject analysis developed for documents consisting of text or images are presented. Then the current systems at two special libraries, specializing in comics and consequently dealing with both text and images, are examined and related to the above mentioned practices, in order to discover differences and similarities.

This master?s degree thesis stems from the new possibilities that digitization offers preserving and increased public accessibility of our cultural heritage, but also how a lack of co-ordination and standardization may result in short-term projects and lack of quality. The purpose of this thesis is to examine a selection of public libraries? digitization projects. The two questions posed are:How does a selection of public libraries conduct their digitization projects concerning a) goals and objectives, b) execution c) what resources they encompass?How well does their work agree with the recommendations that exists for goals, objectives and execution?To answer the questions interviews were conducted with persons in various ways involved with the digitization projects.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to discuss and analyse co-operation between public and academic libraries. The political changes that were initiated during 2004 have come to alter the conditions for Swedish libraries. The Swedish library law was changed at the 1st of January 2005 and co-operation between libraries is now statuary even if there is no description of how the new mission is to be executed. At the same time an extensive report about the Royal Library and its role as the Swedish National Library was presented. This report also recommended an increased co-operation between different types of libraries.

The aim of this issue is to study how Swedish public libraries deal with the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of information in connection with public use of the Internet. The authors intention has been to find out whether the public use of the Internet has caused ethical problems for library workers and how the libraries solve situations when they consider their principles violated by library users. The authors study the debate on the issue in a couple of Swedish library magazines published during the late 1990s and they also give a few examples from the USA during the same period. They study the ethical principles and directives for schools published by the Swedish Board of Education as they claim that many of the public library users are students who bring along their ethical conceptions and thereby affect the ethical climate of the libraries. In their study the authors refer to ethical rules given to librarians by their trade union DIK and to the conclusions drawn from the hearing Good Ethics on the Net held by the Swedish IT Commission in 1998.