The aim of this Masters thesis is to, from a users perspective, investigate which factors affect the library use for six persons with disabilities or visual handicaps. My method has been a case study and the methods applied are interviews and observation. As a theoretical framework I use Tom Wilsons theories and models about information behaviour and transform them to a model about library use. Answers are sought to the following questions: - What does the library use look like for six persons with disabilities or visually handicaps? - How do they experience the library in their own municipality? - Which factors affect the disabled persons library use and experience of the library? All interviewees showed a very positive attitude towards the library and the majority of them visited the library regularly or received audio books by mail.

The research of this Masters thesis examines if during a specific period of time, Environmental scanning connected to Swedish public libraries is discussed in journals that are directly connected to the field of Swedish libraries. The method employed was content analysis of articles, news items and ads with the intention of finding out the extent of Environmental scanning and who carries it out and how and what is scanned. The research covers the period from 2004-01-01 to 2004-08-31. During the research period 1387 articles, news items and ads were analyzed. The study focuses on 81 selected published units that directly include references or discussion about Environmental scanning.

The problem presented in this masters thesis is: How can pedagogical theory be used to illuminate and analyse attitudes of librarians in reading promotion activities for children and young people? The aim is to investigate librarians pedagogical role and attitudes in reading promotion activities for children and young people. The following questions are asked: · How can the pedagogical role of librarians be understood on the basis of different pedagogical perspectives? · How do librarians describe their pedagogical role in reading promotion activities for children and young people? · Is there a relation between pedagogical perspectives and the ways in which reading promotion methods are developed by librarians? Reading promotion methods investigated are booktalk, discussions on reading and summer reading challenges for children and young people. The methods used in the study are literature studies, qualitative interviews and observations.

A prerequisite of an international exchange of information is multilingual tools for information retrieval, such as the multilingual thesaurus. There is an ongoing discussion about the construction of, and the guidelines for, multilingual thesauri. In recent years the praxis as defined in ISO 5964 Guidelines for the establishment and development of multilingual thesauri 1985 has been the topic of a scientific discussion. It has been about how equivalence across languages is to be established when it comes to concepts, terms and relational structures. This masters thesis treats the praxis and practice of multilingual thesaurus construction.

The aim of this Masters´ thesis is to examine parenthood, gender and equality. The analysis is based on the novel Bitterfittan. The primary theoretical points of departure are Judith Butler?s theory about doing gender and Yvonne Hirdman?s theory about the gender system, the hierarchical order and the separation of the sexes. I use Lisbeth Bekkengen?s thesis in which the nuclear family is seen as an institution which is upheld by two structures; that is the social relationships man-woman and parent-child, and also by two discourses; on the one hand a notion that fathers and mothers are principally different and on the other hand the child focus.

The question whether controlled vocabulary or natural language free-text terms is the most effective search strategy has occupied researchers in LIS for many decades. This Masters thesis is an empirical study which aims to compare these two search strategies in LISA Library and Information Science Abstracts, an online bibliographic database. 22 topics from the discipline of Library and Information Science were constructed and out of each topic one query for each search strategy was formed. Queries in natural language were formed with terms from different sources, for example dictionaries, while queries in controlled vocabulary were built with terms from LISAs electronic thesaurus. The measures used in this study were precision, relative recall pooling method and overlap.

This masters thesis is a gender study of the role of the artist in childrens literature of art. The study comprises forty-three childrens books presenting the life of a historic, contemporary or fictional artist. The books are published from the 1960s to the present day. They are written or translated into Swedish and available in Swedish libraries. The representation of the artist is examined separately in the text and in the illustrations.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine three Swedish librarians views on their role regarding their local learning centre and its adult students. The thesis also tries to find out whether the persons responsible for the local learning centres in these municipalities regard the libraries as a resource in this context and if the municipalities express the importance of such a cooperation in documents. Previous research in information seeking and learning is presented and a survey of lifelong learning, local learning centres and libraries is made. Relevant theories, such as Loertschers taxonomy, Kuhlthaus approaches of library skills instruction and levels of mediation as well as Bruces categories of information literacy, are presented and later used in the analysis. A qualitative method was found to be most appropriate for this study, as the majority of the empirical material has been collected through interviews.

The purpose of this masters thesis is to deepen the understanding of the life, survival and canonising of a literary work. In order to do so I investigate how interpretations and evaluations of Doctor Glas 1905, by Hjalmar Söderberg 1869-1941, has developed throughout a century. The study is based on the reception-aesthetical theories of Hans Robert Jauss and Felix Vodicka, and Roman Ingardens theory of the concretizations of literary works. I have, in a phenomenological and hermeneutic way, studied the first reception and the echo of the work, in Sweden, in handbooks, articles, reference books and research. My conclusion is that Doctor Glas by time and different readers has continued to develop so that the work today can be conceived as more complex compared to when it was born, though early interpretations and evaluations still are alive.

This masters thesis concerns three different types of cataloguing within three different memory institutions museums, archives and libraries. The focus lies on the cataloguing elements which are compared in order to illuminate similarities and differences. The Regional Archive and The National Museum of World Cultures - both in Gothenburg - were chosen and compared to KRS, the Swedish counterpart to the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, AACR2, 2: nd ed. The purpose of this comparison is partly to display the elements in order to make students disciplines, but also the staff within archives, libraries and museums to become conscious of each others cataloguing methods in regard to future cooperations within the memory institutions and to see if it is possible to create common cataloguing rules for archives, libraries and museums. The questions asked in this thesis are: 1.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine how daily encounters between the Danish public libraries and the library-users called ethnic minorities are described within the public library field. Danish public libraries have been assigned to play a larger role in societys strive towards integration of immigrants and refugees. Within Danish politics I find an emphasis on the importance of maintaining Danish culture, but it is rarely expressed if ethnic minorities are, can or should be a part of it. Theoretical and methodological starting points are hermeneutics and text-analysis. My theoretical framework is research about international migration and ethnic relations IMER.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how young womens sexuality is described in Swedish youth novels. The analysis is based upon eight books of which four were published during the period from 1970 to 1975 and four books were published during 2000 to 2005. The theoretical framework is based on a gender theoretical perspective where Yvonne Hirdmans theories about a gender system and Ylva Elwin-Nowaks and Heléne Thomssons ideas about gender construction are crucial. Also Anthony Giddens theories about sexuality in the late modern society are used, where the plastic sexuality and the pure relationship are central ideas. The method is based upon textual analysis, and a model of analysis is constructed with its basis in the theoretical attempt.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the use of IT, that is the Internet and other applications of personal computers, among seniors 65+. It also deals with issues of access to IT for seniors in public libraries. The theoretical background of the study consists of Rogers "Diffusion of innovations", Hektors categories of information activities, and the Swedish IT-commissions categories of motives and prerequisites for the use of IT. The research questions focus on factors motivating the use of IT, the extent and the purposes of IT use, the consequences and the barriers that IT-users experience, and views on IT in public libraries and IT courses, respectively. Qualitative interviews were carried out with nine senior IT-users.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the user service discourses in the field of public libraries that can be identified in four Swedish library journals. Also which underlying causes that control the discourses and the consequences of them are examined. Questions in this study are: which discourses can be found, what characterises them, what kind of different discourses concerning technology in society control the user service discourses and what are the consequences of them. The theoretical starting-point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. The method is text analytic.

This Masters thesis examines the position of films in Swedish public libraries. We have, by way of comparing various statistical data, determined that the status of film in public libraries is week. We have completed earlier research by mapping what genealogical, discursive patterns that could be outlined in the Swedish government reports from 1949 until today, focussing on the activity goals and media policy of the public library. We have, on the basis of Foucaults theories on genealogy and archaeology, where text documents are considered to be meta-descriptions giving each other authority, analyzed if there any discursive excluding or contextual formulations exist in the usage of the language concerning the goals and the media attitude of public libraries. We have mapped contextual discursive formulations that to the commissioners have become neutral starting points for their assumptions and conclusions.