This master thesis deals with the problem of integrated libraries. The number of integrated public and school libraries has significantly increased over time. These libraries are integrated for different reasons, most often because of economic considerations. The goal of the thesis is to investigate librarians´ understanding and perceptions of the professional role in this type of integrated libraries. I have investigated how librarians see and interpret their own professional role, and what factors influence their perceptions in an integrated library.The three main questions are: How do the librarians explain their professional role in an integrated library? How does their professional role change because of the fact that they work in an integrated environment? What factors, according to the librarians, influence and/or change the professional role mostly? The data has been collected through interviews with eight librarians at integrated libraries.

In public libraries there seems to be an unspoken consensus on what literary quality is. At the same time librarians are always eager to express the opinion that quality lies in the eye of the beholder. Quality is, it is said, something that you don t have to define. But at the same time it s up to everyone to decide what quality means to them. What I have been missing from the discussion in libraries about literary quality is a theoretical awareness about what it means to divide literature into higher and lower spheres.

The purpose of this bachelor's thesis is to see how public libraries have adopted the new e-book readers and how the libraries think the e-readers will affect them in the future. There are three different theories in this study which are used to see how the e-book reader influences the libraries as an innovation and as a remediation from the paper book as well as its evolution. The authors have used four qualitative interviews where they have tried to find the most relevant librarians for the purpose. It was found that all the libraries in the study think that they need to learn about the e-reader and its functions to be able to understand users? needs, but they haven´t agreed if they should have the e-reader as a library loan.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how public libraries in Norrbotten provide multilingual media and how the commitment is legitimized. In January 2014 there was a change to the guidelines for the International Library?s service for providing multilingual media. The responsibility for the provision of this service was also changed. The result shows there has been different ways of implementing the guidelines in practice; this has led to inequalities in the local library service.We have assembled data through qualitative interviews with five different public libraries in the north of Sweden.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine public library and information technology IT discourses to see which relationships are established between them in four library journals. This is done in two steps, where first discourses are defined followed by an analysis of the relationships established between the public library and IT in each discourse. The questions from which the analysis emanates are as follows: What discourses exist around the public library and IT in the library journals? What conceptions of the tasks of the public library are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the tasks of IT are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the relationships between the public library and IT are constructed in the discourses? The theoretical and methodological starting-points are found in Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. 37 articles from four library journals Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle, DIK-forum and Ikoner - are analysed through a model in five phases.

The aim of this Master thesis is to make a survey of the public library staff-relations at work and discuss relationship marketing as it applies to public libraries. Relationship marketing involves the establishment, maintenance and development of users and other library-related relationships, including the relations among the library staff itself. Good relations among the library staff is a necessary condition for good relations with others. The focus of relationship marketing is at the user?s needs, wants and demands instead of the library collections and services.

In our study, we investigated how the streamed TV domain relates to existing design principles for web design. Further, we have investigated whether there are specific characteristics of the domain that the design principles do not cover. In the survey we have studied two sites which are representative of the streamed TV domain. Finally, we discuss how applicable the design principles are for the domain and the specific characteristics that would require new or further developed design principles..

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate and increase the understanding of Swedish Public Library Websites and to determinate which activity they mediate. To analyse the Public Library Websites Andersson and Skot-Hansen?s model of roles for the Public Library has been used. This model in¬cludes four roles for the library: the library as a cultural centre, a knowledge centre, as an information centre and as a social centre.

The purpose of this bachelor's thesis is to see how public libraries have adopted the new e-book readers and how the libraries think the e-readers will affect them in the future. There are three different theories in this study which are used to see how the e-book reader influences the libraries as an innovation and as a remediation from the paper book as well as its evolution. The authors have used four qualitative interviews where they have tried to find the most relevant librarians for the purpose. It was found that all the libraries in the study think that they need to learn about the e-reader and its functions to be able to understand users? needs, but they haven´t agreed if they should have the e-reader as a library loan.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to do a comparativecase study between a public library in Sweden and one in England. Our aim is to examine what factors affect alibrarian in charge of purchasing fiction for adults and to what degree. We have used two methods of study, specifically semi-constructed interviews with two librarians and text analysis of policies in place at each library respectively. Our research questions share the above mentioned context and should therefore be read with that backdrop:-How is selection and purchase covered in the policies?-What selection criteria are used by the respondents?-What differences are there regarding the decision making? -How can the viewpoints be explained?Our analytical framework was based on three arguments namely market demand, quality and social inclusion when examining our material.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to study what place public libraries have in local politics, particularly from the point of view of the politicians. To answer this, I have interviewed politicians, participated as a silent observer of a public debate, and studied articles on library politics in newspapers and other press. The results show that politicians in general have a positive view of libraries and good co-operation with library professionals, and that they have a fairly up-to-date view of libraries. They are, however, less interested in library issues in general, and are often complacent with the way things are already running. The newspaper studies show that library issues are usually only discussed when a specific library is somehow in danger.

Little attention has been paid in the literature to libraryassistants in Swedish public libraries. In this bachelor thesis,the professional role, work duties, career prospects and statusof library assistants are examined at two public libraries.Because of a scarcity of published information on thedevelopment of this profession in Swedish public libraries,retired library assistants, as well as currently employedlibrary assistants, librarians and a library head wereinterviewed.Since the ?80s, work duties of library assistants havechanged, with a reduction in some of the more manualaspects of library work, the development of new duties and,overall, an increasing similarity in the duties performed bylibrary assistants and librarians.Additionally, the public perception of library assistants as acategory distinct from librarians was investigated bydistributing questionnaires to library patrons. Contrary toexpectations prompted by statements in the literature, asubstantial portion of visitors was found to be aware of thetwo separate categories.Library assistants at Swedish libraries have no careerprospects, unless they undertake studies in their own freetime and at their own cost, and obtain a librarian degree. Adifference between the situation of library assistants inSweden and corresponding professional categories in a fewother countries is that, at present and for several years, noformal education for library assistants has been available inSweden.

This master thesis is an attempt to study the joint-use solutions between the public library and the public preschool in the local district Kristineberg in the community of Borås. The two main questions are; what kind of joint-use library is the activity at Kristineberg? What kind of advantages and disadvantages do the actors experience from the joint-use activity at Kristineberg? The analysis is based upon the interviews with eight informants with different connections to the joint-use library and public preschool. I also use documental analysis and literature studies. Relevant theories, such as Andersson´s and Skot-Hansen´s analysis of the role of the public library and Bundys, Imhoff´s and Dornseif´s theories about joint-use libraries are presented and later used in the analysis.

The competition for people´s attention becomes harder and harder. If the libraries want to continue to attract visitors it´s important that their business is promoted. The purpose of this thesis is to in-vestigate how two public libraries work with marketing. The study is based on a marketing model, introduced by Philip Kotler and further developed by Eileen Elliott de Sáez. Kotler believes that marketing is a social process and that everything can be promoted.

In this thesis the marketing strategies of two public libraries have been explored and studied.The public library of Kalmar participates in the project GÖK which partly is a marketing project. The public library of Kalmar thereby differs from the public library of Trollhättan which is not involved in the project.The main aim of this thesis was to focus on their marketing strategies and see if there were any differences. The thesis was also concerned with the customers and their experiences of the quality of the services offered by the public libraries of Kalmar and Trollhättan, including the customers' perceptions of the operative marketing, and finally if there was a connection between marketing and customer-centered quality. Qualitative methods as well as quantitative methods were used for the collection of information .The preliminary assumption that Kalmar had a more explicit marketing strategy has been confirmed in the study. However, the customers at the public library of Trollhättan were more satisfied with the total quality of the services offered.