The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the design of the reference service and its development that Internet has caused in college/University libraries when it comes to the service provided to the user. I want to examine the quality of this development from the view of the librarians, and also investigate their attitude and how they deal with this development.The following questions were asked:? How has Internet changed the reference service at college/University libraries?? How do the librarians look upon the possible change of quality in the reference service when the Internet is involved?? What attitude do the librarians hold toward this development where Internet is used in the reference service and how do they deal with it?The method used was qualitative interviews. A total of six librarians from Blekinge tekniska högskola, Halmstad högskola, Lunds universitet and Växjö universitet have been interviewed.The theories and models used were ?media richness?, a quality framework including ?quality aspects of a service?, and social psychology and its ?reasons for a positive/negative attitude on an organisations change?.The result shows that Internet has brought more sources of information and additional ways to contact the library.

The purpose for this Master?s thesis is to describe the similarities and the differences of the work at the public libraries? children?s sections, between Sweden and Italy. In order to do that we examine the cultural political presumptions that Swedish and Italian libraries have, such as policies concerning public libraries and children, on a national as well as an international level. We also look at existing attitudes regarding the work at the public libraries? children?s sections, among authors of research literature in our subject.

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 Swedish institute of racial biology was the first of its kind in the world. The purpose of their activity was to gather information about the different kind of racial characters of the Swedish population. They did this by traveling around the country gathering pictures and statistic information. In 1958 it was decided that the institute was going to get integrated with the University of Uppsala and change its research focus to a more medical genetic. Most of the research material also got integrated into the university?s library.The purpose of this paper is to find out how the institutes collection has been handled through the ages and if there have been any controversy or debate about it.

This master thesis was written in the purpose to study how the location and access to computers in the physical realm of the public library reflects the undergoing changes in the public libraries role in Swedish society. This study is done in a form of a case study of three small public libraries. All of them were in the process of transforming both their physical and virtual space. The thesis focuses on where in the library the computers are placed and how their location interacts with the libraries main tasks. It also focuses on the analysis of the relationship between these two elements and how that relationship reflects the alteration of the public libraries place in society.

This report will focus on the folkhigh-school in its general form and the role of the libraries on these types of schools in particular. A library on folkhighschools have a tendency to be forgotten and ends up being somewhere in the middle of the libraryworld and the general educational organisations. The purpose of this essay is to examine and provide general views on the different roles that a library on a folkhighschool can have, as well as looking into the unique aspects of the type of school that a folkhighschool is in terms of influencing the libraries placed there. The methodology used in this study is qualitative. Interviews have been held on three different folkhighschools in south of Sweden.

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.

In this Bachelor thesis, we examine how the work of the librarian has changed over the past three decades. The research questions focus on the changes in librarians´ roles and working tasks regarding factors like technique, meetings between librarians and visitors and also how to give service to visitors.We have conducted interviews with librarians at University libraries as well as public libraries. In all, there were four interviews. We have also compared the two types of libraries.We have looked closely at these factors: the tasks of the librarians, the skills needed, how the library has been used as a democratic arena, and what kinds of meetings there are among librarians and users of the library. From these themes we have created interview questions, and our analysis is structured according to the themes.We have worked from a theory on different kinds of identities within the profession.

The purpose of this study was to examine how some children with reading problems experience and use libraries. The main problem was: How do dyslectic children experience and use libraries and how do they handle their reading difficulties when using libraries? The questions at issue were: 1. Do children with reading problems use libraries, and if so how? - in which purposes do they use libraries? - which materials and services do they use? - why dont some children use libraries? 2.

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.

Internet access has been a part of the range in public libraries for approximately a decade. The Swedish municipals, in charge of the public libraries, and the libraries themselves, have a great deal of saying in how they should be run, what to offer the public, how many hours they have to stay open etcetera. The Library law is very vague on many things, including public Internet access. Even though Sweden is ranked as first runner up worldwide when it comes to Internet penetration among the population (Internet World Stats 2007), approximately twenty percent in the 16-74 age group does not have Internet access at home, at work or at school (SCB 2006a). In this master thesis we try to determine, through personal interviews, how six of those in charge feel about Internet at their libraries, all located in medium-sized municipals (20 000 ? 40 000 inhabitants), why they have chosen the rules and regulations they have and their thoughts about what they consider to be the most important assignment of public libraries.

This paper explores the accessibility for patrons with different physical disabilities in regards to materials, service, the library building and its website at two typical, medium-sized public libraries in Sweden.The case study is based on interviews, observations, and document and literature studies. As a theoretical framework for this study, Buckland?s model of information barriers is used to describe, discuss and evaluate how the two libraries work with accessibility. In addition, international and national guidelines are used to measure whether additional actions are required of the libraries to improve the accessibility.The results show that both libraries are well suited in various respects to provide for the different needs and the requirements of patrons with physical disabilities. Some obstacles still exist in both libraries, especially in the lack of literature in accessible formats in different languages.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the methods public libraries can use in order to market youth services. It is also a chance to evaluate an untested marketing model adapted to public libraries. Young people are one of the most difficult groups to attract to the library and thus librarians need adequate methods to deal with this problem. We have interviewed librarians, carried out observations and examined documents in accordance to the triangulation method. Before one can begin marketing the libraries one ought to know of how marketing is done and the principles behind it, therefore we have given a simple explanation of marketing and marketing theory.

In this Master thesis interest is directed towards approaches toinformation literacy (IL) and critical thinking in the educationalactivities of University libraries. The aspiration of universitylibrarians to promote the critical abilities of students isproblematized. At the center of attention is the project?Lärandemål för informationskompetens? [Learning outcomes forinformation literacy], which in 2006 was carried out incollaboration between the Swedish University libraries, in responseto the educational reforms connected to the Bologna Process.Through the discourse analytical framework of NormanFairclough, documents related to the project ?Lärandemål förinformationskompetens? are studied in order to identifydominating approaches to IL. The purpose is to investigate anddiscuss the possible implications of the dominating perspectives,with regard to the development of critical thinking amongstudents.The study results in the identification of two main discourses, thestandardization discourse and the discourse on employability.

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..