The purpose of this essay is to examine how officials within the Swedish public libraryorganisation view the IT-development, how the IT-development progresses within theorganisation and if there is a need for a national IT-strategy for the public libraries in Sweden.Four unorganized interviews with officials within the regional- and county libraryorganisation and one within the national organisation where conducted. This study is aqualitative examination where the phenomenographic approach has been used as inspirationfor the analytic model. The analytic result has been compared to the system theory of how anoptimal system should be constructed to perform in an optimal way and to be able to producegood results. The results of this study show a wish for a better national cooperation regardingthe IT-development for the Swedish public libraries. Today?s library structure should bereviewed over in order to enable the libraries to produce even better results from the cooperation?s..

Sensory marketingAn effective instrument for libraries? We are living in a world of constant communication and information and because of that, marketing in general seem to have no distinctive effect. Consumers become overwhelmed by all the advertising messages. Due to this, it is clear that organizations like libraries must create a deeper and more personal connection to increase user satisfaction and foster the use of services, among both users and potential users. One way to achieve this is to make use of all the emotional elements of a product or a service.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the transition from SAB to DDC in the public libraries of Sigtuna.More specifically, it aims at investigating why the decision was made to adopt the DDC and how the system has been implemented. Particular attention is drawn to the difficulties and problems that have arisen while organising the libraries open shelves with DDC and to the ways in which the difficulties have been handled. These questions are examined through a pragmatic perspective on Knowledge Organization that focuses on the contexts and domains in which the classification system is used. The empirical material is drawn from qualitative interviews with the former director of Sigtuna public libraries and with the in-charge of the catalogue department.                                                                   .

The purpose of this paper is to study the ongoing discussion concerning e-books at Swedish public libraries. The e-booksituation has as of late gained a lot attention in the media. The main distributor of e-book in Sweden - Elib - is in the centreof this discussion and our goal has been to study the opinions and arguments that have been expressed within articles and blog postsconcerning the situation.We have analysed our articles and blog posts through a qualitative text analysis in order to find the main problems of the e-bookdiscussion and which arguments are used. We have also studied the effect Elib might have on the libraries' collection developmentaccording to the articles and blog posts.We found that the major issues within the e-book situation include Elib's price model - which is costly for the libraries - thewatermarking and the selection of books available to the libraries. It is also considered, according to the author's of our articles and blog posts, that the collections at the libraries are affected byElib's system since the choice of which books to include is given to the publishers, not the libraries or its users.The articles and blog posts agree that a change needs to occur for the e-books future survival at the public libraries..

The aim of this study is to examine how librarians experience implementations of changes in the physical space of the public library. The study seeks to answer the following questions from the librarians? perspective: What are the underlying reasons for changes in the physical space of the library? What are the important functions of the public library to the community residents? What reactions do librarians get from community residents after changes in the physical space of the public library? The study is based on semi-structured interviews with librarians working at seven small public libraries in Sweden. A model of four library spaces, which was developed by Andersson and Skot-Hansen in 1994 and refined in 2012, is used as a theoretical framework to help analyzing the results. The majority of the libraries are structured according to the older version of the model.

The thesis treats how the German public libraries originated and how they were affected by the Nazi era. It deals with how the library system began to cover the whole nation, and describes the struggle between public libraries and commercial and religious ditto. It also treats the weedings out and what happened to the staff and the stocks between 1933 and 1945.Furthermore it gives a picture of what books one could find in a German public library,and how these volumes were catalogued and classified. Moreover it describes how thelibraries managed during the Second World War, and ends by giving some topics fordiscussion and asks questions that additional research might be able to answer..

The rapid change within digital medias has increased the possibilities to make information accessible through network. Therefore the European Union EU considers a harmonization within the Union, in order to strengthen the rights of the originator. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate how the EUs directive 2001/29/EG regarding copyright is to be implemented into Swedish legislation and assess the common opinion in the public libraries on this matter. The basic methodology of this thesis is a democratic perspective, concerning the public libraries democratic role and the right of the citizens to have access to information. The thesis first part is a study of documents.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the accessibility and activities for dyslectic adults in public libraries in the Swedish county of Södermanland. The questions that were to be answered were four; to what extent do the libraries provide book material and special computer software? To what extent do activities occur? Does the library staff have awareness and knowledge of dyslexia and of activities for dyslectics? What are the obstacles for good service for dyslectic library users? Two methods were used. As a first step, a questionnaire was sent to thirty public libraries. The questionnaire elicited a low level of response, but gave in spite of this an overview of the situation for dyslectics in the libraries of the county.

This Masters thesis aims to examine how Swedish public libraries deal with the new challenge of evaluating web resources. In order to study this we have asked staff involved in gathering links for the libraries web sites to participate in a survey concerning how they go about choosing links. Apart from trying to capture this procedure it has been our purpose to establish whether the libraries feel they should provide their patrons with evaluated links at all and in what way they are influenced by other libraries or other main figures involved when choosing a link. We were also interested in the differences between libraries with large and small link collections. When defining evaluation, we have only focused on content.

In 2010 there will be a political resolution to ensure that the Swedish society is accessible to all citizens including people with disabilities. For this purpose a national action plan for disability policy "From patient to citizen" (Govt. Bill 1999/2000:79) has been set out with the aim of ensuring that the disability perspective will permeate every sector of society and that the approach and response to people with disabilities will be improved. The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs is responsible for implementing the disability policy in the cultural sector.Since public libraries in Sweden are a part of the public cultural sector, they will also be affected by the political resolution regarding accessibility. The concept underpinning library services for disabled people must be that of equality of access.

This essay aims to examine how science fiction literature is supported and made available for readers at four public libraries. Each library has its own opinion of what a public library?s role in society is, and that affects how literature acquisition and media exposure is done at that particular library. To explore this, the author uses a modified version of Elzinga and Andersson?s theory of traditionalism, pragmatism and emancipationism.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate and analyse how the concept of lifelong learning is expressed in political documents concerning public libraries and education and how it can be related to earlier concepts of education within the discourse of public libraries. Focus is the official approach to the concept of lifelong learning and public library. The documents examined contain the political aims for education and culture policy on a national and local level. The theories used in the study concern the background and meaning of the concept of lifelong learning, they describe public libraries and their earlier perspectives of education and they also give a picture of practices of governing within the framework of public libraries. The purpose is to see how the speech in the documents is reflected in discourses of society and public library.

Title: Development and continuity: A new institutional case study of a Danish public library in changeAbstract: The purpose of this master's thesis is to discuss and analyse the relationship between the traditional core values belonging to the institution of the public library, and the development work that takes place at the institution. The thesis also investigates the relationships that influence the development work.By investigating a library that is considered progressive in its development work, our purpose is also to unveil alternative values that compete with the traditional core values. By illustrating the perception among seven staff members and the director at Aarhus Public Libraries, we want to illuminate the terms for development among public libraries. In addition to our interviews, an activity plan is studied.We base our study on new institutional theory which focuses on norms and values in an organisation. This focus helps us to understand the development work from a comprehensive view.Our study shows that the development work at Aarhus Public Libraries is taking place in a complex environment that consists of several different actors and different interpretationsof the traditional core values of public libraries.

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.

This master thesis aims to examine how public libraries in Sweden are practically and ideologically equipped to deal with e-books, outside of the dominant distributor Elib. The study also aims to find out what?s required of the book market and the public libraries to make further progress in the question of e-books. In Sweden e-books are still representing only a small amount of all the library loans and an even smaller amount of the commercial book market.The methodological and theoretical ground for the thesis is Grounded Theory, and the survey is based on interviews with publishers, librarians and distributors.The conclusions of this thesis are that the public libraries lack resources to invest in e-books, and that they also lack in knowledge about the media and its readers. It also exposes that both internal and external collaboration efforts need to be further developed.