In the digital era, new services have entered the public libraries, like seeking information on the Internet, in databases, newspapers online etc. But many citizens do not know that these services exist. The libraries have a democratic responsibility to inform about them. In the county of Östergötland a project started in 2001 where libraries in five small municipalities built websites in which they present all their electronic services available. One of the aims was with the help of different kinds of marketing to reach special groups of people, like adult students, small companies and politicians.

In a web environment the library and the librarian continue to function in their role as information provider even when the physical library is closed. Research question is to describe how and in what extent the public libraries websites are integrated in their daily activity and what the causes are for that. The empirical material consists of a survey of number of public libraries websites and qualitative interviews with responsible librarians. I have delimited the study by only investigating the websites of Gothenburg public libraries. In my survey of the websites I have studied four spheres; Services, Contact, Structure and General viewpoints.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how librarians in a Swedish public library view and discuss mediation of fiction. The questions posed in this study are: How do the librarians want to work with mediation of fiction? What type of literature should be provided according to them? How do they express that they relate and should relate to their users? The theoretical starting-points are three categories extracted from Jofrid Karner Smidt?s doctor?s dissertation Mellom elite og publikum: the approach to users, strategies for mediation, and ideals for mediation. The empirical material was gathered through focus group interviews with librarians in a public library.

The aim of this essay is to try to find the differences and similarities of two public librariesin the town of Kristinehamn and the rural community of Vara during the year 1994. Especiallyinteresting was if the different political traditions of the two communities -left wing majorityin Kristinehamn and right wing in Vara- have influenced the forming of the public libraries.The comparison contains accounts from the annual reports produced by the libraries between1987 and 1994, a more thorough study of the activities and interviews with decision makers in1994. The interview with the decision makers indicates that there is a distinct difference betweenthe librarians and the rest of the informants, this distinction shows, that in a tight budgetsituation the librarians prefer not to cut down on staff while the other informants actuallyfavour to make cuts on the procedures handled by the librarians. The general opinionthough, is that they all agree that the role of the public libraries is to defend democratic rights.The final conclusion is that the material of this essay supports the opinion that the idea ofpublic libraries is stronger than the political differences in Vara and Kristinehamn..

This thesis is a discourse analysis analyzing public library librarians' talk on the subject of public library meeting places. Within the field of Library and Information Science the public libraries' functions as social meeting places have been scrutinized for more than a decade. Researchers in the Nordic countries in particular have looked at library users' use of the library space and have highlighted the sociologic dimensions of the public library and the meeting place functions. Few however have paid much attention to the library personnel's point of view. The discourse analysis perspective is about language use and how people construct the reality.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine which role public libraries play or could play within bibliotherapy. The study is based on qualitative interviews with five librarians who, in one way or another have experienced bibliotherapy activities. Further, we have interviewed two treatment assistants and one counsellor, who have cooperated with the librarians, to get their view. We have used the following research questions: Which bibliotherapeutic activities, if any, are pursued in public libraries in Sweden, and how do they look upon bibliotherapy? What role do public libraries play/could play within bibliotherapy? Ever since the term bibliotherapy was coined in the beginning of the twentieth century, the definition has been under debate. We have identified four main subjects of discussion.

Purpose: The purpose of the study reported in this thesis is to addto the knowledge concerning what Public librarians do to meet theneeds of unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors, thereby helpingthem to develop and establish themselves in a new environment.What tasks, activities and tools do the librarians have at theirdisposal? What problems do they encounter? What values, normsand attitudes guide their work? Method: The thoughts andexperiences of six Public librarians have been captured throughqualitative semi-structured interviews, the result of which has beenthematically analysed using notions of social capital and socialexclusion. Findings: Unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors facea number of challenges which the public library with its librarians,collections and various activities can assist in coping with byproviding the children with opportunities to increase their socialcapital and decrease the risk of social exclusion. Researchlimitations: It has for several reasons proven difficult to studyunaccompanied asylum-seeking children as a distinct group, whichis why this study also uses material that deals with refugees as awhole. A significant amount of the latter are undeniablyunaccompanied minors, an especially exposed and vulnerable typeof refugees.

The focus of this work is to study whether public libraries should offer their patrons unlimited access to the Internet, or restrict which sites they can visit. The most common tool used to limit Internet access is filtering software. The author has administered four interviews with Public librarians working in libraries in Southern Sweden. All four librarians had different opinions about restricting Internet access. The most important question asked was if they had chosen to use filtering, and the reasons for their decision.

The aim of this study is to examine Swedish public libraries preservation of rare book collections. In this study a rare book is rare when it become over a hundred years. I will investigate if libraries have any written policies or plans when it comes to preservation and also what the librarians? opinion about rare book collections are. This is of interest because public libraries have a lack of responsibility when it comes to preservation.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to investigate children?s access to specific children?s activities at Swedish public libraries 2005. The thesis is based on literature studies and qualitative interviews with children?s librarians, library directors and local politicians at two demographically different libraries in Gothenburg.The sub questions are: What measures exist to promote children?s access to public libraries and children?s activities when it comes to: law and other political statements: different efforts on the state level and different efforts on the municipal level in the direct activity with children at public libraries? What driving forces and needs justify activities for children at public libraries? How will the responsible persons judge that the efforts are sufficient? The result of the study shows that children?s access to library activity has increased in the last couple of years due to reorganization, economic savings with closing down of library affiliates and because libraries have given priority to other things, like IT and new media. Children?s librarians have got new assignments and less time for children?s activity.The conclusion of our investigation is that children?s librarians are ambitious in their work, but unfortunately don?t give children?s library activity adequate resources.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate what chief librarians in Sweden know about the present education in Library and Information Science and what opinions they have of it. We have used the following four questions as a starting point for our work: + How much do the chief librarians know about the education in Library and Information Science? + What are their opinions of the education? + What emphasis do they put on academic degrees and practical experience? + Are there any differences between various kinds of libraries regarding these issues? We decided to use questionnaires to gather our information. These were sent to 200 chief librarians on both public and research libraries all over Sweden. 151 of the questionnaires were answered.

The Swedish government has made the decision to transform the talking book system from an analogue system to a digital system called DAISY by the end of 2004. The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how public libraries are affected by this system change. This is carried out by studying the current situation in public libraries concerning the transition to DAISY. This qualitative oriented study is primarily based on interviews with four librarians and three library managers at six public libraries. Management by objectives is here seen as a suitably theoretical framework since public municipal libraries are partly regulated by the governments goals and laws.

In Sweden most public libraries give users access to databases. These databases are sometimes possible to reach outside the library by internet at any time and this provides a change for the library and the society. Librarians function as change agents when they give access to databases and when databases are introduced to users. However, reports show that the use of databases, especially those in English, is not high in reference work. This study aims at analysing attitudes of librarians to access and use of databases on and by public libraries.

Our thesis is an analysis of four librarians view on LGBTQ and which implications these views have on the practical work with LGBTQ issues in the public library. The three ideal types we can identify are the excluding, the including, and the normcritical approach. We also want to know if the four librarians? standpoints can be connected to the above mentioned ideal types. We can see that the area where the implementations of the three ideal types are most visible is the way LGBTQ material is displayed in the library space.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine how blogs are used by public libraries for marketing purposes, and how librarians who blog perceive their blog as a marketing tool. The thesis is based on a qualitative study conducted using asynchronous e-mail interviews with librarians representing eleven different library blogs. The theoretical framework and concepts are taken from marketing theory, including Kotler's marketing mix, relationship marketing, and theories on the marketing of non-profit organisations, knowledge organizations, the Internet, and blogs. Our results and analysis reveal that libraries use blogs because they are an easy tool to use, they represent a new way to inform users about the library, they are a way to improve contact with the users and a way to reach potential users. According to the librarians we interviewed, blogs can be used to market libraries in a number of different ways: by disseminating information on the library and its various media and events, by providing a forum to demonstrate the skills of the librarians, and as a way of changing the image of the library.