The purpose of this thesis is to study how children's librarians in public libraries use non-fiction books in their work to promote reading. My research questions are: What methods do children's librarians use för promoting non-fiction books? Are there children who can gain more from non-fiction books than other children do? Are there any differences in working with fiction and non-fiction books? To answer these questions I have interwieved five children's librarians about their methods, attitudes and thoughts on non-fiction books.The result shows that all of the librarians use non-fiction when it comes to promotion reading but not to the same extent. Some hardly use it at all, mainly because the schools that they are serving demands fiction books when practicing reading skills. while others use it but in less extent than fiction, as a way of separating the library reading from school work either because they want to keep the experience of reading in the library apart from school work or because they find it more efficient to do so.

This essay focuses on strategies for acquisitions in Swedish publiclibraries. The topic has been occuring in the public debate off andon since the70s. The dominant view has been that librarians haveallowed demand direct the purchases of media and thus haveignored quality literature.This debate has caused me to reflect on the librarians constantdilemma when purchasing media. Are they supposed to chooseliterature that are in demand, or should an evaluation made bylibrarians be the decisive?The previous research has shown that the library profession istraditionally characterized by a non-judgmental approach.

Traditionally, the majority of Swedish public libraries have carried out most of their acquisitions through Bibliotekstjänst's binding booklets. In recent years, however, many libraries have complemented the binding booklets and other services from Bibliotekstjänst by other ways of acquiring books, such as Internet bookshops, while other libraries have stopped using the binding booklets altogether. There are various reasons for this development, such as Information Technology making it possible for librarians to compare prizes and services from different retailers. Another important reason is the need for public libraries to meet new needs from their patrons, while remaining on a restrained budget, which often causes a need for reorganization of staff and resources.As a way of meeting the new needs for libraries, Bibliotekstjänst has created Profile Services (profiltjänster), a service in which a library outsources its acquisitions to Bibliotekstjänst. The staff of the library, in dialogue with Bibliotekstjänst, design a profile for the acquisitions for the library in question, in order to determinate which types and genres of literature the library and its patrons are requesting.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how purchasingmanagers in bookshops and Public librarians reason withregards to their selection of fiction literature. Nineinterviews have been conducted in this qualitative studymade in the spring of 2013; four librarians, four bookmerchants, as well as a market director of a major chain ofbookstores. Our focus has been particularly directed toascertaining what influence the cultural-political mission oflibraries have had on the process of selection, as well as theextent to which factors such as demand and quality play apart in both organizations. We have been interested inseeing how libraries and bookstores compare with regards tothese factors, because of obvious differences in their goalsand purposes. Librarians see both the benefits and flaws intheir way of working, as well as in the way in whichbookstores conduct their business, and vice versa, that theyare often successful in cooperating, like when arrangingvisits from authors etc.

This is a qualitative interview study of the importance of the non-verbal communication related to the reference situation at public libraries. The experiences of both librarians and users of the reference service have been explored with regards to non-verbal communication. Eight interviews have been carried out. The results reveal that the users and librarians consider that it is important that the librarian find eye contact as well as give affirmation through nodding and smiling. To demonstrate interest and involvement in the questions through attentive listening is also of great value.

This is a comparative study of six public libraries in the city of Gothenburg and its neighbourhood. The main purpose of this master thesis is to describe these libraries relating to a reform in the city council of Gothenburg and its neighbourhood. The comparison deals with a period of ten years, 1990-2000. In order to respond to this I formulated two questions: Are there any differences in the activities of these libraries? Has this reform influenced the librarians in their way of working and if so, why? I have studied relevant literature such as annual reports, investigations and analyses in order to be able to formulate the questions.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate children?s librarian?s perspectives on children?s literature and reading of fiction books. This is a comparative study of Swedish and Lithuanian librarians. The main questions to be answered are how children?s librararians at public libraries motivate their selection and purchase of fiction for children and what kind of considerations there are behind the purchases.

In this thesis, we are concerned with the many different professional roles that a public librarian, working at a small library, has. More specifically, the purpose is to find out which different roles that librarians believe they have, and which view they have upon those. Furthermore, we are exploring the tendencies that librarians discuss in relation to these professional roles. To pursue this goal, we have used the methodology of focus group interviews, with the unconventional twist that our interviews were done using web chats. This may have the advantage that the informants may present more honest views than when using ordinary interviews due to the anonymous character of chatting.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate issues concerning lifelong learning and the role of the public librarian. This is done by examining LärForum Forum for Learning, a project initiated at a public library located outside of Stockholm, with the aim of supporting adults lifelong learning. The major questions raised in this study are: How do the seven librarians interviewed define lifelong learning and how do they perceive their own role in relation to lifelong learning in the public library? Do they work with adult learners in a different way than they do with "ordinary" users of the library? Has their conception of their own role as a public librarian changed as a result of LärForum, and do they find it necessary to acquire new skills because of the project? Data was collected through interviews and observation, and the study is a qualitative case study. The main results are that the librarians see their role in lifelong learning in the public library as self-evident, and they see lifelong learning mostly as learning for an individuals personal development.

The Swedish academic libraries have gone trough radical changes during the last decades. The development of information technology, the educational expansion and new pedagogical ways of learning within the higher educational system have changed the conditions, not only for the academic libraries, but also in many ways for the librarians. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine how Swedish librarians experience their pedagogic role and task in the context of an academic library. The following four questions in this investigation were asked: How do the librarians experience the formal task that they have? How do the librarians experience the physical library environment? How do the librarians experience the co-operation with others involved in their work? How do the librarians experience their own pedagogic knowledge and competence in their daily practice? The study showed that these librarians believed the physical environment to be very important and is seen as a pedagogical tool in their daily work.

This Masters thesis concerns feature film services in Swedish public libraries. We have investigated the opinion of eight librarians concerning values and criteria for selection as regards film. The theory chosen comes from varied disciplines, for example sociology, adapted to our subject. The most important theories are Antonio Gramscis idea of hegemony, Herbert J. Gans concept of taste cultures and Carl Gustav Johannsens discussion about quality.

The aim of this study is to illustrate conceptions held by librarians and library and information scientists about weeding practices of printed books in public libraries. The study has been carried out by performing a series of qualitative interviews with librarians and by study of earlier research relating to the subject of weeding. The results have been analysed by utilizing a textual analysis method called idea and ideology analysis using so called dimensions to analyse and structure the results. The results indicate that weeding at Swedish public libraries is carried out by a mixture of objective and subjective methods, with certain statistical elements. Weeding procedures mainly appears to be legitimized according to what one refers to as knowledge of the local community, although lack of lending are cited from time to time.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the understanding of children's librari-ans regarding children's needs and preconditions in a library context and based on devel-opmental psychology and information seeking theories. The children's perspective is said to be the guiding star in the children's library and the thesis also aims to study the chil-dren's perspective as defined by children's librarians.The master thesis is a qualitative study based on interviews with children's librarians working at major public libraries. Observations of the children's libraries in the study have to some extent been performed.The study reveals that children's librarians are fairly knowledgeable about children but do not to a full extent use that knowledge into adapting the library to children and their needs. The children are not contributing to the adaptation of the library to any extent as there are few routines for that matter. In society in general children are on a regular basis represented by adults and their perspective on children and children's needs, which may differ from the perspective children have on their own lives, and the same is applicable for the children's library.

In this Master we have studied classification system and alternative arrangements of books in a public library. The public libraries in Sweden use the SAB classification system. This system was created nearly a hundred years ago in order to suit the librarians and the Swedish society at the time. Today many library users find the system difficult to understand. This and other factors have inspired a number of libraries to arrange books in an alternative and more user-friendly way.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how the public library can support adult learning through collaboration with other actors in the community. This is done by examining the activity of Linköping municipal library towards the user group adult students. The questions raised consider; the political view of supporting adult learning, the role of the public library, who are the actors in Linköping, the experiences of collaboration and finally what promotes and restrains collaboration. The investigation is done as a case study with qualitative methods. The qualitative methods was found to be the most appropriate for this study, since the majority of the empirical material has been collected through interviews.