The aim of this master thesis is to find out if young people and librarians think that reference groups can support public libraries to meet the needs of young people, and if the reference groups, which the librarians describe, differentiates from the young peoples requirements. I have made a qualitative study with a questionnaire to six librarians who have experience from reference groups and ten interviews with teenagers. The result showed that young people have many interests and needs which can be met from the library. The teenagers were positive to the library and many of them showed interest in having more influence on the library. Many would like to join a reference group, but on the condition that they would be offered real influence.

The aim of this study is to investigate librarians? opinions about books supported by the government and delivered for free to the main public libraries in every community. The study is also investigating how the governmentally supported books affect the process of buying books for the public libraries and how the librarians think about quality and mediation in the acquisition. The analysis is based upon interviews with six librarians that are responsible for the purchasing at five main libraries in small communities in the South of Sweden. The results from the interviews are discussed and analyzed from the perspective of mediation.

The purpose of this thesis is, from a self directed learning perspective, to investigate the support of public libraries and genealogy associations of genealogists' own research, i.e. their search for ancestors as well as their possibilities to broaden their history outlook. Accordingly, five Public librarians and five genealogy representatives in the west of Sweden have been interviewed regarding the support that can be offered to genealogists. The investigated support to genealogists in their own research is about working environment, literature and material, activities and the cooperation between public libraries and genealogy associations. In this thesis conclusions are merely drawn from a self-directed learning perspective, a perspective where also different forms of support are being recommended by scientists.

The purpose of this study is to carry out a follow-up study of the reading stimulating project Arts in Reading. The project was in progress between the years 2007 to 2009 in Sweden and nearly 80 librarians from 57 public libraries participated. The aim of the project was to initiate new methods fot how to stimulate reading for children. The promoters of the project wanted to initiate the use of new art forms in the work for reading promotion, encourage more collaboration with new actors in the culture area, and co-operate more with the children.The aim of the present study is to investigate to which extent Arts in Reading really succeeded in establishing its goals, whether new methods were brought about, and how this work was done. Another aim is to find out how librarians in public libraries work to develop children's reading.The theoretical framework is based on Ragnhild Söderbergh's term inculturation, Elisabeth Björklund's research on how children acquire literacy, and Lev S.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what librarians in seven public libraries experience as major change in their work tasks. We are also interested in exploring how these changes influence librarians? ways of working. In addition to this we want to explore if librarians have experienced change in relation to user?s expectations and demands and if so, how they are met.

The aim of this thesis is to study librarians attitudes towards fiction and reading. I have examined librarians fiction reading habits and how they handle the expectations that users may have regarding their knowledge in fiction literature. There have been many studies concerning the librarians information literacy. This work explores librarians competence in fiction literature. The primary question posted in this thesis is: What kind of fiction are librarians reading and how do they feel that they can correspond to the users expectations? The data collection is based on literature on the subject and qualitative interviews with eight librarians from different kinds of libraries.

In the paper we bring up and analyse the attitudes librarianshave towards youth and youth programs in the public library.The purpose is to raise awareness among librarians and tomake the process of change and development. We have usedsemi structured interviews in order to answer our researchquestions and conducted the interviews with five librarians incharge of the youth programs in different public libraries. Inthese interviews we asked about their views on youth as auser group, youth programs and how this affects theiropinions on the roles of the public library. We have also triedto see how the librarian?s opinions differ from how thelibrary runs their youth programs today.We have used two different models as theoretic framework.One of them has defined three different roles of the publiclibrarian and is constructed by Maj Klasson and the other is adeveloped version of Andersson & Skot-Hansen?s classicmodel of the roles of the public library made by Jochumsen,Rasmussen & Skot-Hansen.

The subject for this Master's thesis is the mission of the public library concerning target group everybody. Control documents, traditions, norms and trends influence how this is interpreted and how the library's service is being formed. The often very abstract terms used to describe the public library's mission makes it open for different interpretations. We are of the opinion that the public library's service should be formed to reflect the needs, interests, and priorities of the community it services, in order to be more attractive and useful.The aim of our study is to examine how the Public librarians define and adjust to the mission to satisfy all citizens needs. Why do they choose to concentrate on certain target groups? And what does that show of how the public libraries reflect their communities? Our investigation includes examining six activities aimed at a certain target group and the six public libraries that carried these out.

In the new Library Act of 2014, it is stated that public library supply should be characterized by quality. To investigate what this means for the library, I do a functional analysis of ideas of librarians' views on quality and how they work with purchasing, weeding and mediation. I have chosen to limit the essay to fiction for adults in Swedish public libraries. By combining the basal idea analysis, where I investigate librarians' ideas about quality, with an operational analysis of ideas, where I examine the effects librarians' quality ideas get for the daily work, Iwant to find out the librarians' quality ideals.The material I analyze consists of 18 questionnaires, filled out by librarians with responsibility for purchasing and / or thinning in libraries across Sweden. The analysis is done with an analytical schedule, that consists of a number of opposing ideal types taken from previous research on quality, purchasing, thinning or mediation.

The aim of this masters thesis is to investigate how childrens librarians deal with gender issues in their work when acquiring and mediating books to children, and how reviews in Bibliotekstjänsts Sambindning can be of help in this aspect. The thesis focuses on children between 6 and 12 years of age and their reading of fiction. Four interviews with childrens librarians and an examination of reviews in Sambindningen have been carried out. The reviews were examined both by finding out with what frequency gender issues are dealt with and by studying 20 childrens books from a gender perspective, comparing my judgement with the one they got in the reviews. The examination of Sambindningen showed that the reviews therein only sporadically bring up gender issues.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate the reasons for public libraries to have story-time today and also the reasons for story-time at the public library historically in Sweden. Why is the phenomenon of story-time still existing at public libraries today? The study is based on a questionnaire that was sent to childrens librarians in the Västra Götaland region. The material collected in this questionnaire was put together and resulted in six different categories showing the libraries purposes and thoughts of their story-time activities. The categories were: cultural heritage/tradition, joy of reading, language and imagination, library visits, storytelling and mutual experience.

This master?s thesis concerns the performance of professional children?s theatre in public libraries. With qualitative interviews I have looked into how four children?s librarians and two theatre consultants appreciate professional children?s theatre, and furthermore I have looked into their view on the importance of theatre for children. My intentions have also been to investigate their views on the function and status of children?s theatre in public libraries and also the relationship between library and theatre activities for children.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to find out if public libraries provide new age materials or not. My research is done using the point of view of the library users. Do they think libraries hold a sufficient amount of new age literature and do the users find this literature of good quality? To find an answer to this question, interviews have been made with a number of library users interested in new age related issues. Interviews have also been made with librarians, to get their point of view on this rather controversial subject.

The aim of this thesis has been to achieve a deeper understanding of how librarians provide adult readers with individually adapted readers´ advisory in public libraries. The focus within this context, has been to find an answer to how the librarians understand what appeal factors the readers are attracted to and what kind of reading experience the readers are looking for to be able to match book and reader.To be able to find answers to our research question we conducted eight interviews with librarians working with readers´ advisory in eight different public libraries in Skåne. Our theoretical standing point for the thesis has been that of Marie L. Radford and Cathrine Sheldrick Ross. Sheldrick Ross provided theories concerning the appeal factors of books.

The main focal point of this study is about public libraries and its possible roles in today's society. Going from having had a clear educational orientation, public libraries has with time amassed several other roles, which all need to relate to the swedish law regarding libraries and other governing documents, as well as business plans. This thesis focus on a qualitative investigation, which was conducted through in-depth interviews with librarians and other staff at a public library in Stockholm, named bibliotek Plattan, to ascertain the prevailing opinions within this facility about the role of libraries and librarians. The choice of examine this particular library was based on the fact that bibliotek Plattan differs from the public library in general and only offers material for adults. Their collection of litterature is primarily based on fiction novels.