The aim of this study is to explain and analyse political steering of public libraries in Swedish municipalities and the roles of politicians and administrators in this process. To fulfil this purpose five municipalities have been studied. It is argued that both politicians and administration have to be included in a study of steering and that the relation between politicians and administrators should be seen as an interplay. Planning and evaluation are discerned as the two main activities in the steering process. The material in this study consists mainly of information collected through interviews with library responsible politicians and library managers in all five municipalities.The results show that libraries are considered politically uncontroversial and that politicians see little need for political interference and steering.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the debate in library journals and in official reports on the subject of library education in Sweden. We focus on two periods: the period just before the year 1972 ? when the library education was transformed into being occupationally-oriented and the period just before the year 1993, when the library education was transformed into being ?academised?. This Master?s thesis shows that the debate and the arguments among initiated people in the library world have had some impact on how the library education was transformed later on.

The purpose of this study is to examine what readers of fiction literature are influenced by when they choose books. What libraries and bookstores do to influence readers in their choice of literature and how readers perceive the librarys and the bookstores influence on them in their choice of fiction literature. We have also studied which factors outside the library and the bookstore that readers are influenced by when borrowing or buying a certain book and to what extent readers are influenced by the books appearance. To answer our questions we chose a public library and a bookstore, where we interviewed six persons in each place. We have interviewed a librarian and a bookstore manager for information about how these two cultural institutions work with marketing of their fiction literature.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how two young adult departments at two public libraries work and what profiles the young adult departments have. To examine the work and profiles at the young adult departments I have used the following questions: What are the ideas about working with young adults? How are the two departments in this study working whit young adults? What or which are the profiles of the young adult departments in this study?To answer the questions above I used a qualitative method based on interviews with the librarians responsible for the young adult departments. To complete the interviews I studied the libraries Internet sites and official documents. The examined departments are located at two city libraries and were chosen manly for their focused age group, 15-25 years and that the departments are well established.To analyse the results I used the theoretic model of Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen about the role of the public library.

Varför ökar antalet besök på folkbiblioteken medan antalet lån minskar? Syftet med den här undersökningen är att studera vad besökarna gör på Luleå folkbiblioteks huvudbibliotek och hur de betraktar sitt bibliotek. Frågeställningarna är: ? Vad gör besökarna på biblioteket förutom att låna böcker, tidningar och AV-medier? ? Hur betraktar besökarna på Luleå folkbibliotek sitt bibliotek? ? Vilka är det som besöker biblioteket? ? Hur är miljön på biblioteket och vilken inverkan har den på biblioteksbesökarna? ? Är biblioteket också en plats som lockar till sig andra besökare än de som söker det som förknippas med biblioteksverksamhet? För att kunna besvara frågeställningarna har en observationsundersökning och en enkätundersökning gjorts. I analysen har några begrepp från Bourdieu använts.

A large part of research about libraries and library buildings in Sweden has been focused on how the building looks not how it functions with the library. The aim with this master?s thesis is to study how a library building is functioning and how its users are experiencing it. This is studied in three libraries, Kungliga tekniska högskolans bibliotek, Sambiblioteket in Härnösand and Vitterhetsakademiens bibliotek. With the questions of how they were planed, what did the libraries want from the new building and which of these demands were realized.

The aim of this essay is to examine different discourses concerning adolescents and library youth services that can be identified in the material. 73 articles from the Swedish library journal, Biblioteksbladet, were analysed trough a model. The different articles were all published between 1916 and 2005. The analysis revealed a result that consists of four discourses about adolescents and youth services at different libraries between 1916 and 2005: the library as fostering discourse, a new era discourse, the visiting activities discourse and the young adult discourse. The library as fostering discourse is based on the idea that the library itself doesnt need to change the service to adolescents, instead the adolescents are supposed to change into good library users.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the local debate on the Music library in Västervik to see what arguments, pro et contra, that constitutes it. Since its opening the Music library has faced regular threats of being closed down. This is an issue interesting due to several factors, its lack of guaranteed public funding and relative importance to Västervik´s attempts at city branding being two. Using argument analysis, the thesis proposes that the local debate shows traces of both instrumental and culture centered, intrinsical views of the Music library, and that the instrumental view holds both negative and positive poles of opinion while the intrinsical counterpart is one-sidedly positive. Further, the thesis argues that this is in line with a long since documented shift in cultural politics towards a more market oriented discourse..

This Master's thesis aims to investigate librarians' identity construction through the study of their narratives about themselves and their lives. We want to understand in what way the education in Library- and Information science contributes to shape the students professional identity and how these identities then continue to be transformed when they enter their professional lives. We assert that this construction of identity takes place through socialisation. We start with the reference work because we think this is a central part of librarians' tasks. Our theoretical starting point is constructionism, we mean that professional identity is a social construction that continuously is formed and transformed.We interviewed six former students at Library- and Information science at Lund University.

The aim of this study is to examine if library and archive will meet professionally in digitization projects. The study has been conducted as a discourse analysis in accordance with the methods of Norman Fairclough, professor of Linguistics at Lancaster University. The texts are seen as linguistic and semiotic elements of social events that can be analyzed as parts of the social process ? discourse. The relationship between events and structures in society will be part of the social practice.The basic data derive from five public documents collected from Swedish government agencies.

This master?s thesis seeks to examine how a public library use the intranet with regards to the possibilities that today?s intranet technology offer ? especially concerning functionalities that support information, communication and knowledge exchange in the organization. The purpose of the study is to investigate how employees in one specific public library perceive and use the intranet in their daily work. The theoretical framework takes its point of departure in two complementing models regarding the implementation, development and management of intranets and a model of a multi perspective view of the intranet as a shared information space for content, communication and collaboration. The study is based on interviews with eleven of the intranet users, whom with the aid of an interview guide have been asked questions regarding goals, implementation, content, design, applications and advantages/disadvantages with the intranet.

The aim of this paper is to investigate who the visitors are at a children's department at amain library in a larger municipality, and for what purpose they use it. We discuss: Is therea difference between various user groups, and if so, how do they differ'? Which library rolesdoes the children's department have? Does the children's department serve as a local libraryfor those who live in the immediate surroundings or as a main library for the whole municipality?The paper is based on a user survey performed in the spring of 1996 at the City Library ofGothenburg. 417 visitors and five staff members were interviewed.The children's department is used by various groups of people, from young children to seniorcitizens. The library roles are, among other things, an independent learning center and formaleducation support center.

The purpose of this study is to investigate librarian?s opinions concerning literature with state supported distribution and how to mediate and market these in the library. The types of mediation and marketing that have been studied are positioning, labeling and oral mediation.The study is qualitative with interviews at seven main public libraries in central Sweden. The respondents of the study were responsible for the literature with state supported distribution within the library.The study is based on a theoretical frame of reference containing theories from Jofrid Karner Smidt, regarding librarian?s mediation in libraries, and François Colbert?s theory on marketing planning for arts and culture.The results of our study showed that librarians have both positive and negative opinions when it comes to the literature with state supported distribution.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how librarians view marketing of the library using social media and how this can be used in a marketing strategy. The theoretical framework for this thesis is based on the 7 Ps of the marketing mix, SWOT-analysis and SWOT/TOWS Matrix. The theory is based on planned elements that make up a product or service offered the market. We have used our own interpretation of the theories to analyse our material. Our main method has been a web-based questionnaire, the questionnaire was sent to 523 librarians active at ten large public libraries and its related branches.

The purpose of my essay has been to illustrate any possible differences between pre-school teachers? and parents' views on the mission of the pre-school put in relation to the pre-school curriculum. In my study I have taken a starting point in the following questions:How do pre-school teachers understand the mission of the pre-school?Do pre-school teachers recognize the term baby-sitting from their profession?How do pre-school teachers perceive the parents' view on the mission of the pre-school?How concerned are the parents according to the pre-school teachers about the pedagogical activities of the pre-school?What do the pre-school teachers do to inform the parents about the pre-school curriculum and how aware do they think that the parents are of the curriculum?What are the plans of the pre-schools to fulfill the new part of the revised curriculum that comes into effect July 1 2011?I chose to utilize the qualitative method with the hermeneutics as a theoretical framework in my study and through interviews study my questions. The interviews were made with four pre-school teachers from different pre-schools in the south of Stockholm.