The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the roles ofthree different Public Libraries in three differentcommunities. In order to get some answers about the roles ofthe Public Libraries I have used the following questions: Howis the local cultural policy formulated? How is the locallibrary structured? What or which profiles has the publiclibraries in the three communities?I have made three qualitative case-studies in three differentcommunities. These three communities are somewhatlocated in the same area in order to identify any cooperationbetween them.

As the way of communicating and accessing information has changed radically over thepast decade so has the way the Public Libraries operate to reach the citizens. In thesetimes the demands of what a public library should be and offer the visitors havechanged. One should have the option to access the digital public library at any givenhour of the day, from anywhere in the world and at least have the same possibilities ofinformation as the visitors at the non-digital, "real" library.In this Master's thesis we will analyze and discuss the condition of the Swedish digitalpublic library of today, 2006, and the forward thinking work with the issues ofdevelopment in this matter. In order to do this we set out to examine the attitudetowards the public digital library among the staff at a small number of Swedish publiclibraries and their supporting institution, the county library. Moreover, the attitudesdefined have been compared to the actual status of the services and medias at the publiclibrary websites.In conclusion, we have detected a certain standardization of what the digital publiclibrary consists of today.

The aim of this thesis is to study different aspects of the Public Libraries' investment in public access computers connected to the Internet. What level of accessibility can be found at the surveyed libraries concerning the number of computers open to the public, as well as chat and email services? What activities have been taking place with the computers in focus, and what have the goals of these activities been? Is there any control of content, and what aspects of the Internet are, if that is the case, subject to censorship. And how do the governmental policies relate to the surveyed libraries' intentions and activities regarding the Internet? In order to answer these questions, each main library in the 42 largest towns of Sweden was surveyed response rate: 100 %.

This Master thesis aims to study the relation between Swedish governmental cultural policy and cultural events at two Swedish Public Libraries. The Masters thesis demonstrates how national cultural policy regulates every part of the public library. This demonstration is a result based upon national cultural policy documents and interviews with employees at two Public Libraries in Sweden. The conclusion that national cultural policy regulates this part of the public library is drawn with help of the circle of culture as applied in Culture Studies and Michel Foucault theories of power. The thesis contains the answer of four questions, two involving cultural policy and the other two events at the library.

The marketing campaign ?Låna dig rik? [Get rich by lending] involved 25 Public Libraries in three regions; Kronoberg, Kalmar and Blekinge. This paper examines 28 news-articles concerning this campaign, found in eight publications in the responding regions. The purpose of this is to determine to what extent the description of the campaign found therein responded to the intents of its founders and to what extent the public had a say in these articles. The result found indicates that the overall image of the campaign presented in the news-articles was well in correspondence with the intents of the campaign itself but that the public views where arguably absent..

The aim of this study is to describe and analyse the creation and the design of a new public library. In order to concretize this, the study sets out from two examples, the Public Libraries in Simrishamn and Landskrona. The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists partly of interviews, partly of literature on the subject. To be able to put these two libraries in their historical context, the essay also provides a short overview of the development of public library buildings in Sweden during the 20th century. Another aspect that is discussed is the actual procedure of planning a public library from scratch.

The aim of this Bachelor´s thesis is to describe the phenomenon ofmarketing. Four Public Libraries in the County of Kalmar have beenstudied in the aim to obtain information on their current marketingin the autumn of 2004, as well as their view of marketing and itssignification in connection to a vision that the Regional Library inKalmar has established. The vision is that the County of Kalmar isgoing to be the best Region of Libraries in Sweden in the year of2010. Target markets for the vision is the general public, studentsand entrepreneurs. The study has done a landing at an early stage ofthe vision, the starting point of which was in the year of 2001.

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.

This paper explores the accessibility for patrons with different physical disabilities in regards to materials, service, the library building and its website at two typical, medium-sized Public Libraries in Sweden.The case study is based on interviews, observations, and document and literature studies. As a theoretical framework for this study, Buckland?s model of information barriers is used to describe, discuss and evaluate how the two libraries work with accessibility. In addition, international and national guidelines are used to measure whether additional actions are required of the libraries to improve the accessibility.The results show that both libraries are well suited in various respects to provide for the different needs and the requirements of patrons with physical disabilities. Some obstacles still exist in both libraries, especially in the lack of literature in accessible formats in different languages.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how officials within the Swedish public libraryorganisation view the IT-development, how the IT-development progresses within theorganisation and if there is a need for a national IT-strategy for the Public Libraries in Sweden.Four unorganized interviews with officials within the regional- and county libraryorganisation and one within the national organisation where conducted. This study is aqualitative examination where the phenomenographic approach has been used as inspirationfor the analytic model. The analytic result has been compared to the system theory of how anoptimal system should be constructed to perform in an optimal way and to be able to producegood results. The results of this study show a wish for a better national cooperation regardingthe IT-development for the Swedish Public Libraries. Today?s library structure should bereviewed over in order to enable the libraries to produce even better results from the cooperation?s..

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.                                                                   .

The purpose of this paper is to study the ongoing discussion concerning e-books at Swedish Public Libraries. The e-booksituation has as of late gained a lot attention in the media. The main distributor of e-book in Sweden - Elib - is in the centreof this discussion and our goal has been to study the opinions and arguments that have been expressed within articles and blog postsconcerning the situation.We have analysed our articles and blog posts through a qualitative text analysis in order to find the main problems of the e-bookdiscussion and which arguments are used. We have also studied the effect Elib might have on the libraries' collection developmentaccording to the articles and blog posts.We found that the major issues within the e-book situation include Elib's price model - which is costly for the libraries - thewatermarking and the selection of books available to the libraries. It is also considered, according to the author's of our articles and blog posts, that the collections at the libraries are affected byElib's system since the choice of which books to include is given to the publishers, not the libraries or its users.The articles and blog posts agree that a change needs to occur for the e-books future survival at the Public Libraries..

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.

The thesis treats how the German Public Libraries originated and how they were affected by the Nazi era. It deals with how the library system began to cover the whole nation, and describes the struggle between Public Libraries and commercial and religious ditto. It also treats the weedings out and what happened to the staff and the stocks between 1933 and 1945.Furthermore it gives a picture of what books one could find in a German public library,and how these volumes were catalogued and classified. Moreover it describes how thelibraries managed during the Second World War, and ends by giving some topics fordiscussion and asks questions that additional research might be able to answer..

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.