The purpose of this master's thesis is to describe the expansion of Sundbyberg public library during the decade 1954 to 1964. Our focus of interest is the library?s concentration on public relations in 1954.During the experimental year 1954 a public relations librarian, Bianca Bianchini, was employed. Her task was to introduce thelibrary to the citizens of Sundyberg who were not already using it. As a background to this concentration on public relations we also describe the early development of the public library in Sundbyberg.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate librarians? experiences and opinions about a system for fiction retrieval based on the subject headings list Att indexera skönlitteratur. I want to know if librarians experience that subject headings searches for fiction literature are a good working tool, if there according to librarians are other resources and means that makes fiction available and searchable, and how they estimate the possibility of non-professionals to use subject headings for fiction retrieval. Six librarians at public libraries in Göteborg where interviewed. The interviews dealt with their work with fiction literature, their experiences of subject headings as a fiction retrieval tool, and with their contacts with patrons.

Z39.50 is a standard protocol designed to create an interface between diverse computer databases for diverse information needs. Since it has to be adjustable it is also complex and demands a certain degree of expertise when being set. However, the aim of this paper is not to make a theoretical description but to examine certain conditions in practice. From the perspective of Swedish research libraries two principal hypotheses are examined: 1) the implementation of a given technology (Z39.50) is primarily influenced by social circumstances, and 2) the way in which the technology is implemented will bias the results of information retrieval. For this examination we need a framework of theories concerning the relationship between technological development and society, organisational theories and database theories.

The main purpose of this master thesis is to investigate in what ways library and public preschool cooperate with families with immigrants background in developing and protecting children's languages and cultures in two districts, Hässleholmen and Norrby, in the community of Borås. I want to investigate the parent's meaning of view according to which roles the libraries and public preschools involvement play. The study is based on qualitative interviews. Nine interviews were undertaken with parents who live in these two districts and five interviews with the librarians and preschool teachers who work in the libraries or the public preschools. The study of relevant literature, which describes topics such as psychological aspects of immigration, facts about children with immigrant's background and their language development and multicultural librarianship, provides a basis for the discussion.

This thesis investigates the reception of middle literature novels among critics in Swedish newspapers and at Swedish libraries. Works by three authors were chosen as representatives for middle literature: Helen Fielding, Nick Hornby and Tony Parsons. The investigation is based on interviews with librarians at the Gothenburg City Library, the total purchased number of books at public libraries in Sweden and analysis of Swedish newspaper reviews. The result is compared with theories by literary sociologists as Jofrid Karner Smidt, Janice Radway, Erland Munch-Petersen and Staffan Bergsten among others. It was found out that literary scientists and critics had a different way of looking at middle literature.

Mediation of fiction has always been one of the main tasks of the public library. The focus on information technology is often seen as a threat and competitor to this task. But technology can also offer new ways to mediate fiction, and the aim of this thesis is to examine how library websites and blogs can be used for this purpose. The research questions are:? What forms of fiction mediating material exist on library websites and blogs?? How is the fiction mediating material presented?? Are there any differences between the fiction mediating working methods on websites and blogs compared with those in physical libraries?The thesis is based on a qualitative content analysis of eight Swedish public library websites and three blogs, and on a theoretical frame work including literature and research on mediation of fiction, library websites and blogs, web design and usability.

The Open Access (OA) movement came to be as a reaction against the enclosure of information resources, facilitated by new distribution technologies. The purpose of the OA movement is to make research results freely available. The aim of this master´s thesis is to increase the understanding of how libraries outside of the academic sphere and within research institutes relates to OA. As a theoretical framework I created two different ideologies, the OA ideology and the nonsharing ideology. I also conducted six interviews with librarians.

For hundreds of years the scientific journals has been the foremost tool for scholarly communication. Publishing of research results is very important for scientists. Often the research is bound to the university and the research libraries supplies the scientist with all journals needed. The last decades the libraries have seen the costs for subscriptions to journals explode. Commercial publishers often lie behind the mostly unmotivated escalation in price.

The aim of this study is to understand how the library environment affects the experiences and feelings of public library users. In order to concretise this, the study sets out from the public library in Bollebygd. We wanted to find out how the library users experience the library environment. Does the library environment affect the meeting between library users? How does the environment affect their moving patterns inside the library? Which environmental factors influence the users' experiences? Our questions were: how do users experience the library environment - as a mediating space for information and culture? - as a social room and meeting place? The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists of qualitative observations and interviews, and literature studies.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to compare the perception and significance of reference work in two countries, Sweden and Germany. This will be achieved by means of a literature review of previous research literature and public documents and a content analysis of articles from two library journals.A first step was to examine the historical development of reference work in the selected countries. In connection with this there proved to be distinct phases in the discussion regarding reference work. These phases with their specific discourses, themes and emphases reflected and thus later were confirmed in the second part of the study.The results show that despite some similarities there are also quite a few differences in how reference work is perceived in both countries. For Sweden, the idea of reference work was introduced relatively early.

The SAB-system (Klassifikationssystem för svenska bibliotek) was created almost a hundred years ago and has often been viewed as insufficient among many academic libraries. KB (Kungliga Biblioteket) has therefore decided to change to DDC (Dewey Decimal Classification) which means that the Swedish libraries are now facing a challenge that involves a change to a new classification system. This is a comparable situation that occured when the SAB-system was created. The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the Swedish library sector´s approach to a new classification system, first to the SAB-system and then to DDC.

The purpose of this masters´ thesis is to examine the attitudes of public librarians towards easy-to-read literature and see whether a connection between these attitudes and accessibility can be made. The study has been performed with a qualitative approach and consists of four depth interviews with emphasis on how librarians relate to and experience easy-to-read literature and its´ users. As complement to the depth interviews, two micro interviews were made. The study can be seen as a follow up to a survey I made 2005, commissioned by The centre for Easy- to-Read. As analytical tools the cultural sociological theories of Pierre Bourdieu, with his concepts field, cultural capital and habitus, have been used.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the virtual reference service Ask the Library [Bibblan svarar] from a postmodern perspective. Ask the Library is a Swedish online reference service that is run by the country?s public libraries. The postmodern theories of Jean-François Lyotard are used to study how information is managed and transmitted within the service.

The aim of this essay is to examine three separate Swedish public libraries and their respective websites on the grounds of the usability sciences. I firstly had to summarize the main properties of the usability-field in order to gain an extended knowledge of its purposes and possible usage for today?s library systems. I was then able to apply the extended knowledge in the examination of the three library websites and the purpose of determining whether or not they were designed according to the standards set by the usability-sciences.Usability is a rather new science that deals with the dissection and examination of computer-based systems, in order to find the key components that make systems user-friendlier. With user needs being the main focus of its research, usability tries to meet all the different needs of the modern user and construct systems that are less system-centered and more user-centered.

The aim of this Bachelor´s thesis is to contribute to theunderstanding of the headmaster´s view of his role when it comes to developing the school library and in particular the work of integrating the library into the teaching. The basis is three questions: What views do the headmasters express regarding the libraries´ main functions? What views do the headmasters express regarding their own importance for the school libraries´ pedagogical role? How do the headmasters regard the interaction between teachers and librarians, as to how the interaction works? To get answers to these questions we conducted semi-structured interviews with headmasters of secondary schools. As a theoretical starting point, we used our own taxonomy for headmasters. The basis of our taxonomy are from the points by the ?Svenska biblioteksföreningen? and ?Kungliga biblioteket?, which together form a description of a school library integrated in the school curricula.