National libraries hold large, valuable repositories of often unique materials. How can we ensure that the knowledge is accessible without endangering the materials that hold the knowledge? Digital preservation is meant to solve this problem. With more and more material being accessible digitally, users are expected to do more and more of the finding on their own, instead of being guided by librarians. What kind of knowledge do the librarians have, that cannot be mediated through a system? How is the knowledge of experienced librarians passed on to new librarians? What is the difference between physical and digital materials? I have interviewed senior and junior librarians of Det Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen, Nasjonalbiblioteket in Oslo, the National Library in Helsinki, and Kungliga Biblioteket in Stockholm to learn about their journey to knowledge of their collections.

User education is an important aspect of university libraries' service to its users. This Masters' Thesis is about online user education. The aim of this study is to analyse five Swedish online user courses in relation to information literacy and learning theory. The web-sites were explored through textual analyses to find how concepts of information literacy and learning theory are expressed. The theoretical framework is based on Carol C Kuhlthau's three levels of user education, Paul Ramsden's three theories of teaching in higher education and Christine Bruce's different aspects of information literacy.

The subject of this bachelor thesis is the debate regarding privatization of public libraries. The purpose is to investigate howprivatization is portrayed in different articles and by different participants. The articles used are from two of Sweden?s largest national daily papers: Dagens Nyheter and Svenska Dagbladet and two of Sweden?s largest library magazines: Biblioteksbladet and Tidskriften BiS: Bibliotek i Samhälle. The questions asked are: how is privatization portrayed? Whatdiscourses can be traced in the texts? And: can one foresee a future aiming towards privatization? In order to answer these questions Norman Fairclough?s critical discourse analysis was used as atheoretical and methodological viewpoint.The discourses found were named: The value ground discourse, the market liberal discourse and the pragmatic discourse.

The main subject with this master thesis is to take a closer look at university libraries specially Gothenburg University Librarys operation of marketing the librarys user contact, how it receives various users demands and carry out the interactive and strategic marketing. Marketing is planning, structuring, implementation, analysis and controls of carefully formulated programs, designed to bring voluntary interactions and relations with the target markets, for the purpose of achieving organisational and user satisfaction objectives. The structure of this thesis covers three main parts. Part I reflects the researchers approach to the subject. Marketing researchers such as Grönroos, Kotler, Bryson, De Sáez and Gummesson among others are presented.

It is said that libraries are the cornerstones of democracy.What is then the democratic mandate, and how is itperceived by the library staff? That's what I examine in thismaster's thesis. I?ve made 14 phone interviews with librarystaff, from assistants to managers, and examined what theirdaily work routine looks like and what they think belongs tothe democratic mandate. I found that all agree that there is ademocratic mandate, but it is not clearly stated in anydocument.I found seven areas that my respondents saw as part of themandate; availability, diversity, children and young people,equality, public education, free of law and cultural history.These are not sharply defined, but can often move into oneanother.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine what part and importance electronic games play in the life of girls, how the girls use electronic games and what the girls think and say about their use of electronic games. We also intend to examine what girls have to say about electronic games at the public library. Our attempt is to illuminate and bring knowledge to those who work within the library with the selection, purchase and conveyance of electronic games. Method used in the survey is focusgroup-interviews with girls in the age between 12-14 years in three different schools. The findings are related to four different perspectives, theory of child development, from a gender perspective, theories of understanding how young people use computer games and theories to understand the purpose of public libraries.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine the picture book canonization process in pre-schools. To succeed in this I have examined what pre-school staff believe to be the criteria of a good picture book. Together with an observation of the pre-schools current collection, other factors which can influence the collection of the picture book are included. This constitutes the foundation for a description of the pre-school picture book canon. To pursue this goal, I have used the methodology of focus group interviews with staff from two pre-schools in a middle-sized town.

The public libraries were quick to adapt to the changes that the Internet brought on, and today library websites are an important part of the public library. To meet the needs of teens today, the library website could offer a range of contents to make it an attractive place on many levels; both the academic needs as well as social and recreational needs should be addressed.The aim of this thesis is to evaluate public library websites for teenagers in Sweden, and to examine how well the websites address the developmental tasks and needs that teenagers have. The method used is website evaluation, one quantitative and one qualitative. A total of 60 public library sites for teenagers were evaluated, using 11 criteria based on Havighursts developmental tasks. The quantitative evaluation measured how many functions each website had per criteria, and showed that the majority of the sites had one or two functions for most of the criteria.

This Master Thesis aims to study and discuss the occurence of three concepts in some influential cultural policy documents which includes the UNESCO public library manifesto, the Swedish libraries act, the Swedish cultural policy objectives, and a study from the mid nineties which deals with the cultural policy. The questions asked are: -Do the documents mention democracy? In what way? -Do the documents mention the public sphere? In what way? -Do the documents mention information? In what way? -How can we understand the content of the documents through relevant theories about democracy, the public sphere and information? Theories about the information society are used, as well as theories from Jürgen Habermas, Herbert Schiller and Robert Dahl. The way of method is document studies and abduktion, with influences from hermeneutic theory. The analysis deals with the documents through these concepts: democracy, the public sphere and information and puts forward the content, or lack of content, about democracy in the analysed material.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the identity, competences and professional development of corporate librarians. I have done an empirical study based on semi structured interviews with 11 information professionals who were working at Astra Zeneca at the time of the re-organizations of the company in 2009 which ultimately led to the closing of the libraries. I have also examined the views on competences and professional development of librarians in general, both in Sweden and in Denmark. I have used Thomas Brante?s theories on profession types as well as Anders Ørom?s theories on librarian identities as my theoretical framework.

This Bachelor ?s thesis is about the conversations and meetings that take place in the mobile library. The research questions will try to answer: What do the staff talk about with each other, what conversations do the staff engage in with their users and what do the users talk about amongst themselves? The thesis main question is trying to answer of what is characteristic for the mobile library ?s conversations and meetings. Is the mobile library as a meetingplace any different in comparison with the city library? Focus lies on the eveningtours of the mobile library and excludes those tours that service schools and learning-centers.

In the year 2003 the Swedish ministry of Justice drew up a communication about the incorporation of the European Unions directive about harmonisation of certain aspects of copyright and related rights in the Information Society, 2001/29/EG. The communications name is Ds 2003:35. This study examines the arguments in the communications from some of the copyright organisations in Sweden. For this study we have used five referral statements from organisations who represents different types of originators. We have studied their arguments and how well they argue for their theses.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to identify discourses within the school library field and to analyse which professional identities the discourses result in for school librarians. The empirical data consist of 71 articles from Swedish journals concerning school libraries and school librarians, between the years 2000-2003. The theory and method used is a discourse analysis which is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. This form of discourse analysis was chosen since it was useful when identity was the focus of study. The analysis is accomplished in three steps.

The aim of this qualitative study is to examine how users of talking books perceive the possibility of downloading talking books from home without visiting the library and how this affects them. Three research questions were formulated:How do talking book users reflect on their library usage?Have the subject's' library usage changed since introduction to the download service?How have users experienced the service?To answer these questions, five semi structured interviews were conducted with five different users of talking books in Sweden. All subjects were currently using download services which they had gained access to from their local public libraries. In analyzing the interviews, a theory established by Henrik Jochumsen and Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen in Gør biblioteket en forskel (2000) was used.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to find out how a number ofhospital librarians look at child and youth patients' reading and itspossible role in a mental and physical healing process. We alsoinvestigate the knowledge, strategies and thoughts the librarianshave on bibliotherapy.Qualitative interviews have been used and seven librarians, at twodifferent hospital libraries with children's and youth activities, wereinterviewed during November and December 2011. The analysis isbased on one theory; we use Sten Furhammar?s model whichincludes four different categories of reading.We can see, according to the librarians? answers, that the mostcommon function of the patients? reading can be explained throughtwo of Furhammar?s categories. Our respondents believe that thepatients mostly read to relax from heavy thoughts and situationswhich can be connected to the category impersonal experiencereading.