The aim of this thesis was to study librarians approach upon reference questions and available resources and also to find out if there is any connection between the nature of the reference question and the choice of resource. The purpose was also to give a deeper understanding of the reference work. Nine librarians were given ten reference questions and their reference work was tape recorded. The study was completed with seven interviews sent by email. Some of the reflections were translated under the headlines of form, subject, time, language and availability.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate and compare the retrieval effectiveness of two search engines on the Internet: Svensk Medicin and Google Scholar. Svensk Medicin is a medicine-specific search engine and Google Scholar specialises in indexing scholarly material. A set of 20 questions in four categories were used to conduct the searches with the search engines. Genuine medical information needs were selected from a question collection provided by the television program Fråga doktorn. The relevance of the first 10 retrieved documents was judged by using a binary scale and the measure used was precision.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate new knowledge about how children search for library material and which strategies they use, and if the latest research gives any answers whether we should adapt systems and services or teach information seeking in a better way. In this thesis knowledge is understood as research publications but also results from projects in library practise, and studies concerning children 6 to 18 years old are included. The method used is a knowledge survey. We have gathered and evaluated documentation from different sources like citation and reference databases within the field of library and information science. The result implicates that there are, both in old and new documentation, three main search strategies children use in their search for information in a library context; they browse, they search in library catalogues and they use some sort of reference service.

This thesis considers the problems associated with searches in insufficiently geographically tagged data. The thesis was carried out at Booli Search Technologies AB, a company developing a search engine for the Swedish real estate market.The aim of the thesis is to identify some areas of possible improvements of the company?s existing technical platform, perform a benchmarking among similar services, suggest possible solutions and lastly, build a prototype from one of the suggested solutions.The thesis starts out with defining the problems that the search engine faces: some areas are not possible to perform searches on, the users are not presented with the full search result that they expect, some results are placed incorrectly on the map associated with the search results and results are also not described with enough geographical information. These problems are due to the fact that the data retrieved at the indexing stage in the company?s information retrieval process are insufficient and incomplete.As a result of a benchmarking process and after discussing the results, severalinteresting solutions were identified.

The aim of this master's thesis is to study how the design of the music library space affects how it is used and its role as an arena for culture. This is done in form of a case study of Library 10 in Helsinki, a public library branch that specializes in music and information technology. The backdrop to the study is the changing context for cultural activity in the information society and the role of public libraries as public space and meeting place. By analyzing the distribution of space in the library, the distribution of functions and artefacts and the spatial use of the room, I interpret the ways in which this distributional logic produces a unique place for music and culture. I discuss the music library design in a space and place perspective, utilizing theoretical tools from cultural geography and the space theories of Henri Lefebvre.

The purpose of this study is to examine the retrieval performance of three search engines, specialized in retrieving news articles: News Index, Excite News Search and Ananova. Thirty questions, grouped into three categories – politics, economy and sports, were used and the first twenty documents for each question were examined. The questions used were designed to be as current as possible and efforts were made to perform the searches with as little time span as possible between each search engine. The precision of the search engines was determined for each of the questions as well as for each category and for the combined categories. In measuring precision an average was calculated, intended to favour search engines that place its relevant documents early in the ranked list.

The web is getting more and more characterized by personalization. Big socialnetworks like Facebook as well as the leading search engine Google increasingly usepersonalization algorithms to tailor the information that they present to users. All inorder to make the information more relevant and engaging for the end consumer. Howdoes this personalization affect journalists who increasingly search the web as a partof their journalistic research? In this essay we have looked at the effects thatpersonalization has on the journalists of tomorrow by conducting a survey amongstudents of journalism.

Sufficient and accurate search support is a crucial factor for successful information searching on web sites. This thesis evaluates the search support on the second version of the web site studera.nu with particular focus on how the web site meets up to criteria formulated on the basis of theories from research in information seeking and information searching. The evaluation is a preliminary investigation that may serve as a basis for a future more comprehensive evaluation. The four major questions for my thesis have been: 1. In which different ways can a user search? 2.

The subject of this thesis is the application of Support Vector Machines on two totally different applications, facial expressions recognition and remote sensing.The basic idea of kernel algorithms is to transpose input data in a higher dimensional space, the feature space, in which linear operations on the data can be processed more easily. These operations in the feature space can be expressed in terms of input data thanks to the kernel functions. Support Vector Machines is a classifier using this kernel method by computing, in the feature space and on basis of examples of the different classes, hyperplanes that separate the classes. The hyperplanes in the feature space correspond to non linear surfaces in the input space.Concerning facial expressions, the aim is to train and test a classifier able to recognise, on basis of some pictures of faces, which emotion (among these six ones: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sad, and surprise) that is expressed by the person in the picture. In this application, each picture has to be seen has a point in an N-dimensional space where N is the number of pixels in the image.The second application is the detection of camouflage nets hidden in vegetation using a hyperspectral image taken by an aircraft.

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.

`When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has´: `I have had, you see, to resort more and more to very small, almost invisible pleasures, little extras....You´ve no idea how great one becomes with these little details, it´s incredible how one grows. ´ The aim of this master thesis is to find words and expressions that can accompany city phenomenas as well as the people wandering through the space which is defiened as city. Through this tentative search a new term was found namely Urban Settler Marks. This term started a journey and an attempt to theoretisize why people have a need for various spaces to put their Urban Settlers Marks onto. My focus was drawn to electrical boxes in the urban environment because of their ambigious nature.

My work has resulted in an interactive search engine for plants that can be found at www.plantit.se. In the work process I have searched for which search criteria is most important when doing searches on woodland plants. I have done this by an analysis of existing databases and with an survey where leading plant expertise answered questions about woodland plants. I analyzed three search pages that are on the internet today Havenet.dk, Backyardgardener.com and Den virtuella floran. I concluded that there are several flaws but also many positive aspects that I have used when developing the interface of my page. The survey resulted in the basis for my search criteria the answers listed the most important factors when planting woodland plants. From this information I developed a system with five values on every criteria.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate and increase the understanding of a present function of today´s public library, namely the function of meeting place; here called the social function or social space. Two small town libraries are included in the study, and the questions examined are:How is this function described at the two libraries and what similarities and differences are there between the two? How can one describe the relation between how the library as social space is described in research and at the libraries? The theoretical framework used in examining these questions, consists of three different discourses in culture policy (the discourse of state, market and civil society) and theories on civil society and the public library. A summary of current research makes visible eight different aspects of the public library as a social space. These aspects functions as parts of the theoretical framework as well.

The aim of the study is to examine how different factors,such as views on how knowledge is produced and howlearning takes place, effect the way an academic librarymanages space. This is done by looking into how a specificlibrary, namely Library & Learning Resources (LLR) at theUniversity of Borås, by re-planning the building?s structure,design and functions, can support the students? differentstudying habits. The analysis is performed by using a theoreticalperspective built by a model first created by thearchitect Daniel Koch. The model is designed to look uponhow space produces meaning and knowledge.

This essay explores to what extent the Swedish language version of Google Images meets the usability requirements of average everyday users. Previously published studies on user behaviour and users? interface and search option preferences define the usability requirements, which are matched against Google Images? actual interface and search options. The retrieval method of Google Images is also briefly discussed, and users? opinions about Google Images too, as they come across in the previously published user studies.The findings are that Google Images lack some of the things that users ask for, but it still seems to be the most used image search engine among average internet users and more appreciated than other search engines.