The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the meaning the reading group of the Public Library has to a number of users. To fulfill the aim the following three questions have been formulated: 1) What do a number of users expect from the reading group of the Public Library? 2) Which approach/attitude or approaches/attitudes do a number of users have to reading and to talking about reading? 3) How do a number of users experience the ongoing reading group?The research is founded on qualitative interviews with five users that take part in three different reading groups in public libraries. The theories that are used is the theory of three so called strategies - the pragmatic, the traditionalistic, the emancipatory ? and the theory of flow.

The purpose of the study is to reach knowledge about how public librarians understands and describes environmental scanning as a working process in a Swedish Public Library. The study consists of 5 interviews with public librarians working within the same organization. The empirical material is presented in two ways. The first one is what aspects of the external world the librarians find important. The second is through a theoretical framework based on Magnus Hoppes model of environmental scanning, including communication and cognitive processes aswell as ways of analyzing information from the external world.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to investigate the value and impact that reading groups organized by Swedish Public Libraries, have on its participants, role of the librarian and the Library as whole, according to librarian?s conceptions. In literature and earlier research reading groups are described to represent an important reader pro-motion tool for Public Libraries. At the same time the typical reading group member is often described as a per-son with a familiarity of reading. Another purpose is therefore to investigate the contribution of reading groups in promoting reading, according to librarian?s conceptions.

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.

This bachelor thesis examines the library as a public sphere in the notion of Jürgen Habermas? theory from 1962. The questions asked concerns how the public sphere is discussed in relation to Swedish public libraries today in our late modern society. The analyzed material consists of the Swedish Cultural Bill of 2009 and five qualitative interviews with librarians. The material is analyzed with two of the four social actions presented by the sociologist Maw Weber: value-rational and instrumental.

This study examines the closure of public libraries, and the nonprofit organizations takeover of them as a phenomenon. The aim is to understand why the nonprofit takeover is common and what the takeover symbolizes and if the discourse in media invokes the views on libraries and the profession.Interviews were made with librarians, politicians and representatives of a nonprofit organization to study different sides of the phenomenon. Other empirical data were found in local and national newspapers and media-channels. I discovered that public libraries are highly valued by both politicians and the community. The study also showed that a library in a community makes people feel valued.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between librarians and library support staff in public libraries regarding status, distribution of work and working climate. We were interested to know if there is a conflict between the two occupational groups and how it can be explained. We also wanted to learn what the future holds for the library in terms of professional categories and tasks according to library staff of today. This study is based on twelve qualitative interviews with four heads of libraries, four librarians and four library assistants. Three theoretical approaches were used in the analysis of the interview material: professionalization strategies, conflict theories and theories from group psychology.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what role the new city library in Halmstad has for its users. The questions posed in this study are: What do the users actually do at the library? What roles are the most significant according to the users? Have the politicians succeeded in their intention of realizing a modern library according to the users? The theoretical starting point is Andersson?s and Skot-Hansen?s theory of four different roles of public libraries. In order to extend the model we added a fifth function; the one of aesthetical experience.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine how daily encounters between the Danish public libraries and the library-users called ethnic minorities are described within the Public Library field. Danish public libraries have been assigned to play a larger role in societys strive towards integration of immigrants and refugees. Within Danish politics I find an emphasis on the importance of maintaining Danish culture, but it is rarely expressed if ethnic minorities are, can or should be a part of it. Theoretical and methodological starting points are hermeneutics and text-analysis. My theoretical framework is research about international migration and ethnic relations IMER.

In Sweden, many children in compulsory school attend after-school recreation centres. All children are offered local after-school recreation centre attendance in the age 6-12 during their parents? work hours. Our aim with this Master thesis is to investigate how after-school recreation centres can use libraries to stimulate children?s own interest to read.

The purpose of this thesis is to construct a marketing model to be used both theoretically and practically when working with marketing in Swedish public libraries. This objective is achieved by first making a literature review of the written works on the marketing of libraries, and then studying the marketing activities at the Public Library in Bollebygd, Sweden. The theory is based on the marketing mix model the 7 ps, which serves as a framework for the presentation of the empirical result and the analysis. One of the questions posed in the beginning of the paper is how the library has worked with marketing over the past ten years. Through a combination of methods observation, textual studies and interviews the marketing activities employed at Bollebygds library are noted.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to investigate how one independent senior high school without a school library regards the role of school libraries. (What is their view of information literacy? Do they manage to reach the goals of Lpf 94 and the goals of each school subject without a school library of their own?). We have chosen to interview the principal and two teachers. Our major findings are that the Public Library in our study has been given the role of a school library, a role we think it can not fulfil.

The aim of this Bachelor?s thesis is to investigate the public librarian?s professional identity and its relation to the Public Library as an experience centre. The development of the library as an experience centre raises questions about how public librarians understand their professional identity, and about their motives for working with activities like workshops and qigong, activities that have no significant connection with the librarian?s traditional tasks. The data was collected via semi-structured interviews exploring the perspectives and points of view of four public librarians.

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.

Eight libraries, seven public libraries and one college library, in the northeast of Skåne serve as foundation in a collaboration where students and adult learners are placed in the center of attention. The aim of this Master's thesis in library and information science was to study how the students and adult learners in the northeast of Skåne perceive the library services that are developed with their needs in mind.Our method for this thesis was a quantitative interview study. We aimed to conduct interviews with users at the public libraries within the cooperation and thereby find out whether or not users within the target group were aware of the services that are developed and established within the northeast Skåne collaboration.The results showed that only a few respondents in the key target group did in fact know about certain parts of the library services especially developed for the northeast of Skåne-collaboration. The majority of the key target group also thought that study-related literature and reading rooms were the most important means that the libraries have to offer them in their studies. The northeast of Skåne-collaboration had many ideas concerning library services.