The purpose of this Master thesis is to increase the knowledge about how Public libraries can contribute to fulfil political programmes aimed towards integration. To achieve this we have conducted an evaluative case study about a public library in Sweden and the activities they carried out within the framework of the metropolitan policy programme Storstadssatsningen?. The questions raised consider which the political aims for integration within this programme were, which activities the library did accomplish, what the result in comparison with the politically decided aims was, and what conclusions can possibly be drawn from this? The theoretical framework consists of theories regarding evaluation, political programmes, integration and segregation, and public library-activities.

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.

This master?s thesis attends to a debate in the Swedish daily press concerning the public library which arose after the Swedish Moderate Party?s publication of their cultural political document Kulturen 2.0. This document contains a number of standpoints, of which three directly concern the public library: charges on book loans, libraries on contract and politically balanced purchase policy. In all, 28 articles are examined by means of an idea and ideological analysis. The purpose is to find out what is behind the conflicts surrounding attitudes about the public library's mission and activity in an era of needs for change.

This Master?s thesis concerns the public librarian?s professional identity. The complexity of the mandates of the public librarian, and the public library, raises questions on how librarians understand their professional identities. The empirical material consists of qualitative in-depth interviews with librarians. Two theoretical approaches are used in the analysis of the material with a focus on the public librarians? knowledge and professional role.

This thesis is about language planning in Faeroese libraries as seen from the countrys specific situation, with Faeroese as a mothers tongue, but with great dominance of the Danish language within media. The purpose of my thesis is to examine language planning activities within the library, and the consequences this planning has for the system. Different theories about language planning provides a framework for my model of the library as a linguistic eco-system with actors performing status planning, represented by the government with its influence in cultural politics, the librarian with his or her library tasks and the user with his or her needs. The thesis has a qualitative attempt, and the empirical material consists of different documents about the country and materials from interviews made with seven qualified librarians, employed within general libraries in the Faeroe Islands. The analysis shows that the librarian in different ways promotes the Faeroese language within library activities, and because of the attention paid to the user in the public library he/she influences the librarians planning.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

The aim of this study is to compare how three local librarieshandle their collections, and to compare this with handlingcollections at national level. I have investigated librarian?sopinions of their collections and how they take care andpreserve them for the future. It has also been studied if thelibraries collections of old material contains more than justold book rarities.In this study I had compared my respondents answer withSvante Beckman and Magdalena Hillström`s theory ofmuseum`s four idealtypes. Their view of a museum is in theforms of a treasury, archive, school and a theatre.

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 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 web sites of Swedish Public libraries display a high level of heterogeneity when it comes to design and graphical user interface. The thesis is based on the opinion that the visuals of a public library web site have implications for the user as well as for the library. The design of the graphical user interface influences the attention of the user and his/her ability to absorb information. Furthermore, there is a connection between the visuals and the users opinion about the credibility of the content of the web site, as well as of the organisation itself. The research question is: Which factors may have an impact on the design of the graphical user interfaces of a public library web site? The purpose is to create an understanding for these factors and emphasize them.

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 master thesis is a study of a new electronic library reference service-project called Speak instantly to a librarian and the purpose of the thesis is to investigate a new electronic reference service and how the librarians who work with it experience it. This should be seen from an informational society point of view. The study is conducted from two questions: - What needs do the libraries have and how do they argue for the project and the chat-reference service Speak instantly to a librarian? - How do the librarians experience the personal work situation in the new reference service, and its use of chat technology? Together with interviews of a selected group of librarians from the Public libraries of Göteborg, Malmö, Nacka and Stockholm, this thesis includes aspects such as the theory of the informational society by Manuel Castells, as well as literary studies of the history of library reference, the development of electronic reference service and the virtual library, and the background and the beginning of the studied project Speak instantly to a librarian. The thesis also contains an overlook of other similar library projects in the United States of America.

Should libraries first and foremost be a source of free informationwhere the citizens can find whatever information they want, or dothe librarians have a responsibility for what kind of works theypresent to people on their shelves? A wild debate broke out inSwedish media in September 2012, after the artistic leader ofKulturhuset in Stockholm; Behrang Miri decided to weed out allthe Tintin albums from the children´s library Tiotretton. Hewanted to start a debate on stereotypes in children´s fiction, andwhat damage they do to children who face them. The purpose ofthe thesis is to carry out a discourse analysis of this media debate,and to identify the different views that are expressed on thedemocratic mission of the libraries, what media they shouldpresent. The method and theory is based on the discourse theory ofErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and their concepts are used toarrange the analysis around certain themes that build up twodifferent discourses; ?Freedom of information discourse? and the?Weeding out discourse?.The two main questions are: What views of the Public librariesselection of works are expressed in the Tintin debate in Tiotretton,and how do the views relate to each other? What concepts arespecific for the debate, and what meanings do they get in thesedifferent views?In the concluding chapter I discuss which consequences theseopposing opinions can have for the future selection processes ofthe library..

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.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine children's communication and interaction during story time at the public library. The aim is also to examine how to develop the story time ? in terms of participation and equality ? at a specific library.Action research was used as a research strategy and participant observation, log, tutoring and interviews as methods to collect data. Since action research is done on the basis of practice, a significant collaboration with the librarian and the participant children is taking place within this study.Research from the fields of Library and Information Science, Education and Childhood Sociology form the interdisciplinary research area to which this study links. The theoretical framework consists of theory and concepts from the Socio-cultural Perspective, Poststrucuralist Feminism and Childhood Sociology.