The purpose of this essay is to examine what happens with library e-resources after implementing the discovery tool Summon. Summon provides a Google-like experience and uses multiple facet options when users need to narrow their discovery. Observations of change in the libraries e-resources with regards to database searches, click-throughs in linkresolvers and full text downloads are examined through looking at earlier reports and statistics from libraries in America and England. This provides a way to compare with Chalmers University of Technology?s Library.

The aim of this study is to examine how librarians experience implementations of changes in the physical space of the public library. The study seeks to answer the following questions from the librarians? perspective: What are the underlying reasons for changes in the physical space of the library? What are the important functions of the public library to the community residents? What reactions do librarians get from community residents after changes in the physical space of the public library? The study is based on semi-structured interviews with librarians working at seven small public libraries in Sweden. A model of four library spaces, which was developed by Andersson and Skot-Hansen in 1994 and refined in 2012, is used as a theoretical framework to help analyzing the results. The majority of the libraries are structured according to the older version of the model.

User-centred acquisitions at three academic librariesA new way of developing collections has been adopted at a number of small academic libraries, user-centred acquisitions. The method implies that the main way of building the collection is by means of receiving suggestions of titles from library users. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate changes in acquisitions of monographs. At a more detailed level it seeks a deeper understanding of what user-centred acquisitions is and how the method effects the acquisitions process. Changes in stock management and the reason why the libraries have chosen the method is investigated as well.

The aim of this study is to investigate librarians? opinions about books supported by the government and delivered for free to the main public libraries in every community. The study is also investigating how the governmentally supported books affect the process of buying books for the public libraries and how the librarians think about quality and mediation in the acquisition. The analysis is based upon interviews with six librarians that are responsible for the purchasing at five main libraries in small communities in the South of Sweden. The results from the interviews are discussed and analyzed from the perspective of mediation.

The study of culture is specifically relevant to libraries confronting changes. A variety of conditions makes it beneficial for libraries to understand the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the underlying culture. Such an understanding can help libraries in adjusting to changes easier, without losing the cultural values that they hold important to their identity and strategic strengths.Taking this as a starting point the purpose of this essay is to examine and describe what aspects in prevailing library cultures are important to pay attention to when meeting changes. To accomplish this we will explore the concept of library culture, its substance, meaning and expression.Culture is reflected in the artifacts, values and underlying assumptions of formal and informal groups. Culture can be found at various levels.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate and increase the understanding of a present function of today´s public library, namely the function of meeting place; here called the social function or social space. Two small town libraries are included in the study, and the questions examined are:How is this function described at the two libraries and what similarities and differences are there between the two? How can one describe the relation between how the library as social space is described in research and at the libraries? The theoretical framework used in examining these questions, consists of three different discourses in culture policy (the discourse of state, market and civil society) and theories on civil society and the public library. A summary of current research makes visible eight different aspects of the public library as a social space. These aspects functions as parts of the theoretical framework as well.

In 1972 a national higher education for librarians was started. Up until then different categories of librarians got their education separately. The aim of this Master's thesis is to explore the attitude towards this new education for librarians. The study will concentrate on the attitude of the representatives from the research libraries. Researchlibraries had, until 1972, recruted their librarians amongst Ph.D-level scholars.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate what chief librarians in Sweden know about the present education in Library and Information Science and what opinions they have of it. We have used the following four questions as a starting point for our work: + How much do the chief librarians know about the education in Library and Information Science? + What are their opinions of the education? + What emphasis do they put on academic degrees and practical experience? + Are there any differences between various kinds of libraries regarding these issues? We decided to use questionnaires to gather our information. These were sent to 200 chief librarians on both public and research libraries all over Sweden. 151 of the questionnaires were answered.

This master thesis is aiming to find out how school libraries work towards children in school years 1-6. The mainfocus is how the school librarians and teachers work with literature and reading. The theoretical viewpoints aremainly the sociocultural theory and the child perspective.The study was conducted with participants from five different schools in Uppsala, in the form of qualitativesemi-structured interviews. The results show that schools work with literature first and foremost in a pragmaticway, with reading-strategies and activating discussions. Very little time is spent on reading for its own sake.

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 Master thesis is to describe why and how public librariesuse the social networks Facebook and Twitter. The focus is to study whatbrought about their use, how the work is carried out, ideas and objectivesbehind the use and what libraries actually convey on the networks. Themethodology is twofold: semi-structured interviews with responsiblepersonnel at four Swedish public libraries, and an ethnographic contentanalysis of four months of the libraries' status updates and tweets onFacebook and Twitter. The theoretical framework consists of a model forthe roles of the public library in society, and of discourses about thepublic library in media.Results indicate that social networks are used to market, make accessibleand inform of the library's resources and services. Furthermore, networksare used to communicate/interact with followers and to inspire people toread.

Ten years ago the public computers with Internet access were introduced in the public libraries. The purpose of the public computers was to give the possibility of searching information. Along with the Internet came also communication media like chat and e-mail. This type of communication was a new function for the libraries and the reactions among the librarians were mixed. It has been a source of big frustration and attempts to block it has not succeeded.

?Facebook has become as natural as having a phone? The use of social media in three libraries in the Umeå region ? an evaluationSocial media has come to be an integral part of people?s everyday life, as well as the business world in terms of communication and marketing. More and more libraries also embark in the use of social media, and the purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of social media in three libraries in the Umeå region. The libraries all use Facebook as their current, primary social media. Thus this study focuses partly on the analysis of the content on each library?s Facebook page, and partly on the experiences of the responsible librarians. The evaluation is based on a mix of existing tools in evaluating social media that are relevant in a library context.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the offer from the ministry of education and cultural affairs to Swedish public libraries concerning a computerised connection to SUNET (the Swedish University Network). The study is based on analyses of the main texts from the campaign and interviews in order to identify arguments that caused the libraries to accept or decline the offer. My conclusions are that the marketing of the SUNET-offer was to a large extent filled with technicalities, and that the campaign failed to identify and focus on the true recipients the decision-makers. The wordings used in the written material were too negative and discouraging. In order to succeed with future concentrations concerning public libraries, it is vitally important to overcome the boundaries between the decision-makers in the local government, the people responsible for information technology and the library staff..

This master thesis deals with the problem of integrated libraries. The number of integrated public and school libraries has significantly increased over time. These libraries are integrated for different reasons, most often because of economic considerations. The goal of the thesis is to investigate librarians´ understanding and perceptions of the professional role in this type of integrated libraries. I have investigated how librarians see and interpret their own professional role, and what factors influence their perceptions in an integrated library.The three main questions are: How do the librarians explain their professional role in an integrated library? How does their professional role change because of the fact that they work in an integrated environment? What factors, according to the librarians, influence and/or change the professional role mostly? The data has been collected through interviews with eight librarians at integrated libraries.