This Master thesis aims to study the relation between Swedish governmental cultural policy and cultural events at two Swedish public libraries. The Masters thesis demonstrates how national cultural policy regulates every part of the public library. This demonstration is a result based upon national cultural policy documents and interviews with employees at two public libraries in Sweden. The conclusion that national cultural policy regulates this part of the public library is drawn with help of the circle of culture as applied in Culture Studies and Michel Foucault theories of power. The thesis contains the answer of four questions, two involving cultural policy and the other two events at the library.

The main aim of this master thesis was to see the process of an interactive online reference service from idea to final product. The reference service we have studied is developed and used by the Library of the National Institute for Working Life in Stockholm, Sweden and goes by the name phibi. Our goal was to review the whole realization process from the reasons why a service like this was created, how the service was introduced and implemented inside the organisation and finally what the result and consequences were for both the library staff and for the users of the service. Phibi is designed to be a tool that fosters communication between the library staff and the remote users where the users get the opportunity to be helped with their questions by the library staff although they are not physically present in the library. To understand the process we conducted a case study with 11 interviews of the library staff, the superior and the initiator to phibi.

Every now and then, in media research studies and in various newspaper articles, schoolboys´ issues reading habits are discussed. Much of what is written concerns boys decreasing marks in the field of literature, in the Swedish language and also their negative attitude towards reading books. Some scholars claim that boys do not read because they consider reading books as a women´s duty. Other people believe that underlying causes for boys negative attitude towards reading is biological, that it´s genetic and consequently physical, and that male and female brains are functionally different. Another theory of today is that boys actually reads, but not that kind of texts and literature that they are exposed to in school.Based on a selection of these opinions and theories, and my own experience and interest for questions concerning school and gender, the aim of this studie was to examine boys worlds of reading.

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how the public library can support adult learning through collaboration with other actors in the community. This is done by examining the activity of Linköping municipal library towards the user group adult students. The questions raised consider; the political view of supporting adult learning, the role of the public library, who are the actors in Linköping, the experiences of collaboration and finally what promotes and restrains collaboration. The investigation is done as a case study with qualitative methods. The qualitative methods was found to be the most appropriate for this study, since the majority of the empirical material has been collected through interviews.

The essay is about the Nobel Library's investments in fiction, the change of certain linguisticareas since 1904 and the purchase policy of the Library. The paper contains an introductoryhistorical chapter, where I describe the history of the Swedish Academy, the life and willof Alfred Nobel and in conclusion a description of the Nobel library of the Swedish Academy.When writing this essay I have used a combined qualitative and quantitative method, meaningthat I have interviewed the librarians of the Nobel Library, studied the purchase catalogues,and kept statistics over the books.in different linguistic areas purchased since 1904 onwardwith an emphasize on years ending with "4". The outcome of this survey is that the purchaseof books within the different speech areas doesn't vary as much as first expected, and thatthere rises and falls within all the linguistic areas which could be further explored..

The basic idea behind an extra year in school was to offer students who have not read nine years in Swedish primary school an opportunity to prepare themselves to pass a high school. This first group that went an extra year in school consisted of eleven students who completed their studies and went on to high school. During the time the group expanded, the school received students from various schools in the same municipality. During the follow-up of these groups could be noted that there were many students who registered, but only few students completed their studies and went on to high school. The purpose of this study was to explore why leadership in the classroom is important for students.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the importance of public libraries for individuals in their everyday life and to study the differences in views between the individuals. Questions posed in this study are: What do public libraries mean to individuals? Which differences between individuals views of the public library are to be found? What is the reason for differences to occur? The analysis is based upon qualitative interviews with six persons, four women and two men between 31 and 55 years of age. The theoretical starting points are Anderson and Skot-Hansens theory of four different roles of public libraries and Bourdieus theory of lifestyle. The study acts on a hermeneutic attitude.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine three library weblogs to evaluate how they are used and what type of information the libraries publish in these specific weblogs.The following three questions are the basis of this study:? What is the content of the weblogs?? How is the weblog used as a tool by the libraries?? How is the interaction between the library and the readers of the weblogs presented regarding the comment function?The method that has been used in this study is content analysis and the code units have been created during the process. It is mainly a qualitative analysis but it does also contain quantitative elements. With the content analysis, 21 different themes where cut from the three weblogs. These themes where then put into the model of the local library profiles worked out by Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine in what way library users are depicted on images at two academic libraries; the University College of Borås Library & Learning Resources (BLR) and the Gothenburg University Library (GUB). 62 images, from websites and information brochures, are analyzed and the main questions are: How are users represented on images? What activities are shown? What is the difference between BLR and GUB? How can the consequences of the representations be understood? Little is currently known in the LIS-field about how images work as constructors of the social reality. The theoretical and methodological point of departure of the study is discourse analysis, new institutional theory and picture analysis.

Policy documents in the public library field, such as the library legislation, local political goals and intra-library plan documents, often include ambitious but ambiguous formulations. This two years master?s thesis examines the relationship between four policy documents and library practice in a local context. The theoretical framework is inspired by a sociocultural theory developed by the Swedish professor of pedagogical psychology Roger Säljö. The theory emphasizes the importance of context to learning and development.The thesis? method is a case study.

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine upper secondary school teachers? views of their students? information seeking practices and their perspectives on consider the concept of information literary. The theoretical framework consists of a sociocultural perspective and the empirical material has been collected through interviews with six upper secondary school teachers. The material is analyzed phenomenographically and revealed three practices. Social science teachers consider the library and librarian to be valuable resources for students? information seeking, particularly in view of information overload in society today.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to describe the library development in Sandviken, during a period from 1865 to 1945. I will mainly focus this examination on the two most significant libraries of the period; on one hand the library facilitated by the ironworks company, and on the other hand the library of the Workers? Educational Association (ABF). This study is carried out within a theoretical framework consisting of the two concepts paternalism and the formative moment, as formulated by Lars Magnusson and Bo Rothstein, respectively.

This Master s thesis deals with the display of library media, whether it is conceivable and desirable to draw inspiration from the retail business when displaying articles. The questions asked are: are there, in the retail sector, well established display ideas and - if so - what do they look like? Are the similarities in conditions, between the branches, sufficient? In conveying the ideas to libraries, are the potential differences not obstructive? Is there, among librarians, a positive attitude towards further development of library display techniques? The results were achieved by interviewing shop window dressers and librarians. In addition, a survey was sent to the library managers of 65 public libraries in southern Sweden. The results show that there are established ideas and methods of displaying materials, and that the ideas are manifested in frequently used techniques.

In 1930 a new library reform came into force, which in reality was the beginning of the modern Swedish library. The purpose of this reform was to take measures to promote efficiency, for example to increase library co-operation. The Government grants were at the same time raised considerably. However, as early as in 1930, but especially the following year, the depression hit Sweden. The Government reduced the grants until the first half of 1936.

This study is an attempt to examine a hospital library's difficulties in reaching customers with consumer health information. The method was a case study of the consumer health service in the hospital library in Västerås, a town in Sweden. Qualitative interviews, observations and written material were used. The approach was from the actor's point of view with the intention to look upon the problem with the eyes of those who work at the hospital with information to patients, that is librarians and medical staff. Theories about marketing in service organizations and how to develop new services were used in the study, as well as theories about communication and different cultures within organizations of different kinds like the library and the hospital.