The explosion of information technology has given users direct access to an ocean of information. Increased availability puts increasing demands on the ability of students and researchers to search for, filter, and structure information. In response, the role of the research library has shifted from being primarily an information resource to being an educational resource with a focus on teaching users what is known as information literacy. This thesis is a study of user-education at the Karolinska Institute Library KIB, the largest medical library in the Nordic countries. KIB has invested significant resources in developing user-education, and has a full-time user-education developer and a formal pedagogical platform for user-education.

The focus of this two year's master thesis is on participation of children at the TioTretton Library, a library strictly for 10-13 year olds. No adults, except the library staff are allowed in this library. To build on this aim the objectives of this thesis is centred on the questions:How does the library staff view their specific library's mission? What are the conditions for children's participation at TioTretton Library? Based on the relevant theory of participation, how participatory are the children in the library's activities? What significance has TioTretton Library's work with children participation for the children's ability to empowerment?The theoretical framework is mainly centred upon the Ladder of Participation designed by R. A.

A qualitative study is presented concerning children?s participation in the local decisionmaking in Swedish municipalities. The study also aims at finding out what are considered to be successful factors and obstacles connected to the implementation of children?s participation in local decision-making. The study contains a summary of the convention on the rights of the child, focusing on article 12, as well as previous research findings concerning children?s participation and factors enabling respectively hindering participation.

The aim of this study is to examine some teachers and assistants? perception of conditions for students? democratic participation in the compulsory school for learning disabilities specialization training school. In order to deepen and more clearly describe the purpose of the study, three issues have been selected. Firstly, how do teachers and assistants perceive the concept of participation? Secondly, how do teachers and assistants perceive students opportunities for participation in teaching? And finally, do teachers and assistants perceive students? opportunities for participation in democratic activities of school? It is a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews.

I have in this thesis studied how guidelines for organizing information in a custom- made user interface could be made. Teletal is service with a special designed user interface were information is stored. The purpose of this study is to encourage a consistent organization, and management of information in a user interface. The methods used in this study are as follows ? qualitative interviews and two card-sorting tests, of which one was closed and the other open.

This paper deals with how people use public libraries. An attempt is made to distinguishbetween different user groups on the basis of how they use the library. The roles of thelibrary in relation to its users are also discussed.The paper is based on a user study with the cooperation of 195 users. The user studywas carried out at the Public Library of Alingsås 1994. As material for comparisonsimilar studies from Sweden, but even from Denmark, have been used.

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to examine whether a web-based library catalogue is to be considered user-friendly. We have examined this from a user-perspective by interviewing users of a web-based catalogue at a public library. In order to get a picture of the user-friendliness of a catalogue, the thesis is centred upon the following questions: How is a web-based catalogue used? What problems do the users experience? How is the catalogue perceived by its users? Since the producers of these catalogues now are taking into account the research upon human-computer interaction, we are also interested in finding out whether a web-based catalogue is more user-friendly than a more traditional OPAC. We do this by comparing the results of our examination with earlier studies of OPAC use.

This bachelor thesis is about communication problems and treatment during the reference interview. The purpose was to investigate the reasons of why users? information needs are not always understood by the librarian and what to do about it. I have also investigated what kind of skills that can be useful for librarians to have and how a librarian can act in a way that makes the user feel welcome during the reference interview. The method I used was a literature study and an own study through interviews of library users.

The aim of this Master thesis is, from a sociocultural perspective, to investigate the views the teaching librarians at Södertörn University Library (SHB) have on learning, information literacy, and their own pedagogical role, and how their views affect user education and their ideas about the future of user education.The research questions used were: How do the teaching librarians view learning? How is this view reflected in their work with user education? How do the teaching librarians envisage user education in the future, and how do they work to reach that goal?Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teaching librarians at SHB. The interviews were then analysed using qualitative content analysis.The results of the study show that the teaching librarians at SHB share a sociocultural view on learning, and take a communicative oriented approach to user education. They believe that communication and interaction support learning, and in the classroom they stimulate discussions both between librarian and student, and between the students themselves. In the future, they hope for improved collaboration between librarians and academic staff, and that user education will become a natural element of the curriculum..

Denna kandidatuppsats undersöker hur user experience kan främjas i ett adaptivt talbaserat system i en fordonskontext. Att undersöka och involvera user experiencei adaptiva talbaserade system är i synnerhet viktigt i denna kontext då den primära sysslan, att köra, bör störas så lite som möjligt. Ett adaptivt system ger möjlighet att effektivisera interaktion och ett talbaserat system låter föraren fokusera på trafiken.Genom att undersöka existerande teori och utföra empiriska undersökningar i form av användartester genom Wizard of Oz-tekniken och intervjuer har vi skapat designoch dialogexempel. Dessa förslag kan främja user experience och på så vis bidra till att den interaktion som sker är effektiv och behaglig. .

The outset of this thesis is to raise questions on how we design for the mobile context and the capabilities of smartphones. Not only the presentation but also the use of input and interaction between a service and a user.This work evolves around sign up forms and answers the question: How does the sign up process affect the holistic perspective of a digital service regarding usability and user experience? This thesis consists of a case studies, and design experiments conducted on Twitter, Instagram and Randos sign up processes to explore if and how the usability, and the user experience could be affected and im- proved.This concluded some important aspects to be considered when designing sign up forms for a digital service.The usability, and the user experience is not only affected by user interaction, and the choice of input method but it?s also affected by which data the service is requesting, and more important; if that data is motivated to request by the service..

In 1998 the Swedish Socialist Government initiated a project in order to promote economic growth and to end the discriminating social and ethnic segregation in the greater city regions of Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo. One of the goals of the project was and still is to promote political participation in 24 of the poorest areas of the three cities. In a quantitative analysis I evaluate whether or not the project so far has been successful in promoting a specific part of political participation, i.e. electoral participation in communal elections. The results of the 24 poor city areas are compared with a group of 14 likewise poor city areas of major swedish cities.According to my hypothesis, general improvements of the socio-economic status of poor city areas ought to generate positive effects on electoral participation in communal elections.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine reviewswritten by users in library online catalogs, online bookstoresand on the web community LibraryThing, in order todetermine whether there are any differences in the way usersreview books, and whether these differences might explainwhy libraries experience difficulties in getting their users toreview books. At the core of web 2.0 and library 2.0concepts lies the thought of User Participation, and largerlibraries have sought to implement systems for reviewingand tagging items in the catalog in ways similar to onlinebookstores and other websites.By analyzing the contents of user reviews, however, thisthesis shows that users express themselves differentlydepending on what kinds of literature they review, and inwhat context. Most notably, user reviews of ?the Classics? orcanonized literature recognizes the high status of suchliterature, while users reviewing popular fiction expressthemselves in a way that admits that the reviewed titles areconsidered less valuable. There are also signs that booksreviewed at online bookstores are seen as products ormerchandise, while the reviews at the library to a greaterdegree treat the books as works of literature.The conclusion reached in this thesis suggests that there maybe a relation between the image of the library as a defenderof high culture and the perceived status of literary works,causing users to become hesitant to review books, feelingthat they do not have the knowledge to describe or reviewthem ?correctly?..

The Swedish school law says that students who need special education should have all the support they need to reach the qualification that is set up. The arrangements have to be written down in an Individual education plan (IEP). Before the IEP is set up there has to be an investigation about what kind of support and measures the student needs to reach the qualification that is set up. The aim of this study is to examine student?s participation in school and in the progress with their own IEP.I have accomplished a qualitative study by interviewing eight students during the letter part in the nine-year school.

In this paper we take a look at digital applications to help the user with public transportation. The main goal was to evaluate the problem a user can face when aiming to use the public transportation system, and to create a application for Apple Iphone that can enhance and help the user, no matter if he is familiar with the local public transportation system, or if he is less familiar with it. The aim was that the user wouldnt need any previous knowledge to be able to use our application. We combined Location-Based Services with Realtime-travelinformation and trip planning to examine if this combination could make both of the two different user-groups satisfied. To understand the problematics a user faces when approaching the public transportation-scene, Scenario-Based Design is evaluated as a method to grasp this problem.