This essay points at the importance of public libraries as arenas of meetings between refugees and the local population, and by this - creating social kapital in the society as a whole. The researchers Aabø, Audunson and Vårheim have created theories about low-intensive meeting places, that means ? neutral, public places where accidential meetings with different strangers can happen, which can create social capital and trust among each other. To complement these theories I also use Vårheim who have implementet social capital-theories to the sphere of public libraries. These two theories complement each other and can help me investigate two public libraries in a rural area in Sweden.

In this Master's thesis we investigate the collection management regarding fiction for adults. The apprehension of fiction has changed over the years. From the beginning it was considered to be mostly educational rather than being the purpose of entertainment. As for today these views are not opposites to each other. Regarding this we discuss the problem concerning terms of quality.

The aim of this two years master thesis is to explore the relationship between public libraries and deaf adults. I want to know if deaf adults are a prioritized group in Swedish public libraries. Deaf adults use Swedish sign language witch is a visual language and differs from Swedish. I discuss the difference in Swedish Sign Language and Swedish and the importance of Sign Language literature. I also explore what methods can be used for mak-ing the library service towards the deaf group more customer centered and service oriented.The lack of sign language knowledge among the library personnel can lead to communication barriers.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to describe the development of the most important libraries in Skövde, starting from 1830. We conclude our examination about 1940, when the municipal library has been active for almost ten years, and the libraries started by the temperance and working-class movements have been deposited at the municipal library. In order to explain this process we describe the development of the Swedish public library and its predecessors, such as reading societies and the popular national movements? libraries, as a background and comparison to the early libraries in Skövde.

Sammanfattning Jag har i denna uppsats sammanfogat två litterära teorier genom att använda ett väletablerat begrepp, hybriditet, inom den ena teoribildningen, postkolonialism, på en annan teoribildning, postmodernism. Under arbetet med uppsatsen har jag brottas med en enhetlig definition av hybriditetsbegreppet men insett att en sådan inte existerar, jag har därför citerat vad ledande teoretiker på området har skrivit om begreppet och sedan försökt hitta beröringspunkter för att kunna skapa en enhetlig definition. Jag har presenterat denna, personliga definition av begreppet i uppsatsen. I uppsatsen har jag påvisat hur olika forskningsdiscipliner ser på hybriditetsbegreppet och via ett annat etablerat begrepp inom sociologin, flanören, har jag gett ett exempel på hur postkolonial litteraturteori och postmodern litteraturteori kan överbryggas. Jag har också skapat ett nytt begrepp för att underlätta överbryggandet av gapet mellan postmodern litteraturteori och postkolonial litteraturteori i uppsatsen, den hybride flanören..

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the transition from SAB to DDC in the public libraries of Sigtuna.More specifically, it aims at investigating why the decision was made to adopt the DDC and how the system has been implemented. Particular attention is drawn to the difficulties and problems that have arisen while organising the libraries open shelves with DDC and to the ways in which the difficulties have been handled. These questions are examined through a pragmatic perspective on Knowledge Organization that focuses on the contexts and domains in which the classification system is used. The empirical material is drawn from qualitative interviews with the former director of Sigtuna public libraries and with the in-charge of the catalogue department.                                                                   .

This bachelor´s thesis analyzes the debate in a number of Swedish media regarding the introduction of video games as a new medium in the public libraries. The theory and method used is discourse analysis. Three questions were asked: how the introduction of video games as a new media in libraries is discussed, how is it motivated and in what way the authors of the articles analyzed are speaking about new media and the mission of the library. The selected articles were divided into four themes and the analysis resulted in the identification of two main discourses, one which is positive to the introduction and integration of new media in the libraries? collections, and one which has a more negative approach and uses quality and culture as an argument. The conclusion is that video games are a medium so widely used that librarians have to decide whether or not they want to include it in the libraries? collections, and by deciding this they reveal their attitude towards the mission and purpose of the public library..

This masters thesis is a study of official political documents in order to discuss privatisation and the Swedish public libraries. In the 1990s public libraries became placed on contractors, and that was said to be one form of privatisation. The main issue for this study concerns driving forces and obstacles for privatisation of public libraries. Another issue concerns advantages and risks. We will also discuss how the future of public libraries will be in this context.

The major aim of the thesis is to describe the networks, relations and marketing of some university libraries and their customers in the year 2000. I illustrate how these issues interact and whether they have changed due to the recent development of technology and if so, how. The thesis is based on interviews with two directors of libraries and two librarians at two different libraries. A small survey with 16 questionnaires has also been performed in order to get a more general view on librarians' opinions in these questions. The thesis mainly shows that the networks in which the respondents take part primarily exist in the library sphere and towards the universities.

The Swedish government has made the decision to transform the talking book system from an analogue system to a digital system called DAISY by the end of 2004. The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how public libraries are affected by this system change. This is carried out by studying the current situation in public libraries concerning the transition to DAISY. This qualitative oriented study is primarily based on interviews with four librarians and three library managers at six public libraries. Management by objectives is here seen as a suitably theoretical framework since public municipal libraries are partly regulated by the governments goals and laws.

A general topic underlying this master thesis is how the public library is being transformed through the subversion and re-articualtion of meaning according to different discourses. The aim of the study can be divided in to levels of analysis. At the first level, the aim is to investigate how categories such as users, needs and vision are articulated in a specific case ?the visionary project Garaget in Malmö, a project which in part include a public library inspired by Idea Store. The next level of analysis sets out to explore how the case of Garaget is related to a totalizing discursive struggle over meaning within the element the public library.

The underlying purpose of this study is to investigate how the libraries in Sweden organize and administrate the service of providing literature in other languages than Swedish. The study focuses on the central guiding principles that regulate the provision of multilingual literature and how these guidelines are implemented in to practice at the libraries. As the guidelines are closely connected to the official discourse in Sweden concerning policies targeted towards immigrants, the guidelines will be examined from a perspective of integration politics. To assemble data a survey has been conducted looking into factors such as how the libraries perceive the guidelines, how the libraries do business intelligence and user inquires to reach out to the users of the multilingual media, forms for statistics and method of working. The results points out that the libraries in their work with multilingual media are confronted with three tensions; the first tension is that between the libraries aim to promote equality and freedom for the individual and at the same time to fulfil certain collective interests and goals.

This thesis is about new technology in academic libraries in the form of Patron Driven Acquisition. As libraries take part in the digital era, a new model of patron driven acquisition has emerged. This model gives users more influence over the libraries electronic book collection. The collection development model changes libraries traditional role in the collection development process, from collecting for the future to the present.The purpose of this thesis is to gain knowledge of what acquisition librarians think about the effects of PDA on the collection, the acquisitions role and the cost structure. The theoretical framework relies on Christensen?s theory about disruptive technology and was used to interpret outcomes of new technology in libraries and its staff.Five librarians from four different Swedish university libraries were interviewed using a qualitative semi-structured method to carry out the investigative part of this thesis.

The aim of this thesis is to study the effects of self-service on professional qualifications of library assistants in three public libraries in Sweden. The research questions are: - How do the library assistants experience that their professional qualifications have changed since self-service was introduced at the library? - Does the view on library assistants? professional qualifications and future differ between library managers and library assistants? - Does the view on library assistants? professional qualifications and future differ between the three different libraries? The method used is qualitative interviews with six library assistants and three head of libraries from three different public libraries. The theoretical framework for this study is constructed by theoretical ideas about professional qualifications and technology's impact on professionalism. The results indicate that the cognitive qualifications of library assistants have increased and social qualifications both increased and decreased.

What is an economic crime? Who is an economic criminal? How do we speak of the phenomenon and what does they way we speak mean? The immediate result of the study is that there is a stereotype image of the economic criminal that is produced within peoples speech. This image contains characteristics that bring the subject, the economic criminal, far away from the traditional crime subject, and brings it closer to a non-criminal subject. This motion render possible that economic criminals can talk of themselves as ?not bad people?, ?normal? and ?like everyone else?.