The aim of this master thesis is to examine which criteria are generally used to guide pub­lic librarians in their acquisitions' decision. The study went ahead in France, principally at La Bibliotheque municipale de Lyon. It also includes a view of some special library services in the social field.Twenty persons were interviewed and an attempt was made to divide their answers into three sections: acquisition routines and criteria for media purchase, how to receive the library visi­tors and their influence on the acquisitions, and, finally, the librarians' own opinions on the matter. One important question was whether censorship is applied and in that case, would it be a deliberately way of acting or rather a spontaneous reaction, more or less unconscious.Censorship in real or manifested through a self-preservative reaction turned out to be a factor closely dependant on the library's financial situation. Many librarians affirmed they would find useful some kind of a written practical library acquisition policy..

?Facebook has become as natural as having a phone? The use of social media in three libraries in the Umeå region ? an evaluationSocial media has come to be an integral part of people?s everyday life, as well as the business world in terms of communication and marketing. More and more libraries also embark in the use of social media, and the purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of social media in three libraries in the Umeå region. The libraries all use Facebook as their current, primary social media. Thus this study focuses partly on the analysis of the content on each library?s Facebook page, and partly on the experiences of the responsible librarians. The evaluation is based on a mix of existing tools in evaluating social media that are relevant in a library context.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate what attributes were used in story-time activities, why attributes were used in story-time activities and what functions they have. The study is based on qualitative methods in the form of a literature studies, observations and interviews. The interviews were undertaken with two storytellers from the same Public Library. The story-time activities were adapted for children from three to six years of age. The study suggested that there was a connection between story-time activities and a social and cultural perspective.

This is a two years master?s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies, which purpose is to find out what ideas there are about school libraries and to get an idea of how informants interpret the new Education Act, which requires all students to have access to school libraries. Another intention of this paper is to highlight the potential rural-related attitudes of the responents. The study includes the sparsely populated municipality of Krokom and is based on interviews with librarians, the school director, principals and politicians who work there. The theoretical basis for this paper is Loertscher?s model för school libraries and a centerperiphery perspective.

Randomness is a complex area of computer science, where only pseudo random numbers are possible to generate algorithmically.This report presents established algorithms for random number generation by conducting a basic study of relevant literature, while testing distribution and speed of the algorithms contained within the C++11 Random library. The results are compared to the algorithm XORShift and a modified version of it. The study shows that the modified algorithm passes all tests in Small Crush, andthat the run time is shorter than for those in the Random library. The conclusion is that it is possible to, with simple means, modify an algorithm to outperform the algorithms of the C++11 Random library..

This bachelor's purpose is to examine different types of library work directed at theSwedish national Jewish and Romani minorities. The thesis will begin with accounting for thepolitics of Swedish national minorities and of today?s situation for Jews and Romanis in Sweden.We will, to accomplish this purpose, use a three-piece question formulation regarding therespective works of the libraries, as well as the possible benefits that cooperation betweendifferent libraries could bring. The questions are answered in the analysis of four qualitativeinterviews through a model based on Dorte Skot-Hansen's thoughts on the library's different rolesin different understandings of society. The analysis will lead us to a final discussion, in which wewill present our results: that distinct guidelines regarding the national minorities for the publiclibraries are a necessity for Sweden?s fulfilling of the responsibility towards these groups; thatthere is a need for a coordination of the propositions and conventions regarding the nationalminorities in the shape of a substantial legislation; and that this field in the future needs to bethoroughly observed and examined in order to evaluate how the Swedish public libraries meet the needs of the national minorities..

The purpose of this ideology critical study is to investigate the hidden content in the reform Gy11 and compare it with the concept new public management. After the clarification of the hidden content, we compare the structure of the organization in Swedish high schools with the structure in public sector called new public management. The main questions of this study are the following: Is it possible to see the foundation of new public management in the Swedish high schools when it comes to the views of knowledge and the formation of goals? Which similarities can we find when we look at the organization new public management and the Swedish high school?The result showed many similarities, both regarding the views of knowledge and the formations of goals. The structure of new public management has been largely implemented in the Swedish high schools and the schools now focus more on instrumental knowledge rather than universal knowledge based on understanding.This is not surprising due to the social progress.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to elucidate the phenomenon of storytelling and its methodology in the context of Public Library story-time for pre-school children. It also strives to give an insight into the functions of story-time both with regard to the storyteller and the participating children. The study is based on qualitative methods in the form of a literature analysis, observations and interviews. The interviews were undertaken with two storytellers from the same library who work with children up to three years old and children aged between four and six years. The result of the study suggests that storytelling is more appropriate than reading aloud in situations when large groups of children are involved.

The values politicians relate with public administration are likely to affect the way that they want the public administration to be organised. The purpose of this study is therefore to examine which values Swedish parliamentary parties relate with public administration and more particularly how they emphasise these values.The study is conducted as an analysis of theoretically relevant bills that the government party and the parliamentary parties have introduced to the Riksdag, and reports and statements of opinion from the parliamentary committees. The documents are from the Riksdag´s sessions from 2000/01 to 2005/06. After examining the documents the conclusion can be drawn that the value that is most emphasised during the period is legal security. This might mean that legal security will have more influence on the decisions taken about the organisation of Swedish public administration..

This essay intends to provide an understanding of the developments in the right of public access and recreational activities in the forests of Sweden, and which factors and prerequisites that have affected this development. The forest and its history, along with recreational development has in many ways shaped today?s rights of public access, but there is also an age-old tradition of public access that has affected how we have used the forest, and that also has enabled the development of outdoor recreation. Many are unaware of this, which causes misunderstanding to appear around the rights of public access and how it is supposed to be used.The essay opens with historical descriptions of public access, the Swedish forest and outdoor recreation, to thereby provide a picture of how these three fields have influenced each other over the centuries. This is followed by a description of the current access rights and the problems associated with those, and a description of other countries' equivalent of the right of public access.

Chunks and Tasks is a programming model based on the C ++ programming language. This programming model is used for electronic structure calculations, among other things.The purpose of this project is to improve the CHT-MPI software library for Chunks and tasks, so that calculations of matrix-matrix multiplications are performed more efficiently than they do with the existing software library. The software library is based on the work stealing method, which is a method the software library for Chunks and Tasks uses for the distribution of the calculation work. The considered way to improve the software library is by modifying the work stealing method in a way that makes the distribution of calculation work happen in a more efficient way , which will lead to calculations performed faster than before.Two different modifications of the work stealing method were tested and it led to two new methods, Method 1 and Method 2, which distributed the calculation work differently. Method 1 did not give results that were compatible with the theory, since the calculation time with this method was much longer than the previous method.

Close to the city center of Reykjavik lies the combined national- and university library of Iceland. Usually, these two types of institutions are separated. The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the library in fact selects the new digital material to offer the users in Iceland, and if the combined mission creates any problems or conflicts.The investigation examines the planning and the content of the digital library, what user groups are addressed and how the organisation is held together despite the different missions. If cultural context in Iceland makes a difference for what is selected and offered to the users is also discussed.Six informants in strategic library positions dealing with the digital national- or university library, were interviewed. The answers have been analysed in light of the library&information literature on building and maintaining digital library collections and organizational and marketing theory.The main result of the study is that the informants do not see a conflict between the missions of the organisation, although traces of a struggle were found in some areas.

The municipality of Falkenberg is a result of a unification of several smaller municipalities in 1971, each one with a small library. This left Falkenberg with an unusual large amount of smaller branch libraries. The object of this thesis is to describe and try to understand the political conflicts that have erupted during the period 1971-1994. Through a case study containing press clippings from the local newspaper, different reports, political meeting protocols, a historical background of the library and a study of library specific norms and regulations I can create an image of the heated debate. The participants in this debate can be divided into politicians and civil servants and the conflict circles round the fact that from an economical perspective, there is not enough budget to keep all the small, local libraries.

"What's feminine about the Women's library?" This library, Kvinnobiblioteket, is abranchoffice at Björkskatan in the city of Luleå, and the introducing question is thestartingpoint of this essay. To find some possible answers is its object.One way of describing what's feminine about Kvinnobiblioteket is through presenting itsobjective, ambitions and methods of working. That is done mostly in a chapter headlined"Kvinnobiblioteket", and shows how the women's perspective concerns for exarnplepurchase of books and magazines, displaying of books, the opening hours, design etc.Although the focus in the survey is not in the former kind of description, but in the interviewsbeing made during a two week long period of time with ten women at Kvinnobiblioteket(both library user and personnel) at spring 1995. The results of the interviewsthen have been compared with theories from psychological-, feminist-, literature- andlibrary and information sciences, as we11 as to former surveys and essays.The material together leads to some keywords that seem to be important when trying tofind out what's female about the women's library.

Information is essential in order for pharmaceutical companies to be successful. This essay focuses on the information provision of pre-clinical scientists at AstraZeneca R&D Lund, and the role of the company library in this process. In semi-structured interviews, four pre-clinical scientists were asked to describe their information provision regarding what type of information they need, how they find it and what sources of information they use. Four librarians from the company library were also interviewed to give their perspective on the information provision of pre-clinical scientist. The study also aimed at comparing the image of the process as described by the scientists themselves and the librarians.