The increased travelling of today makes nodes along travelling routes more and more important. This is very much the case of petrol stations. They constitute important nodes in the road network, filling up thirsty fuel tanks and hungry stomachs, guiding road users and providing vehicle-services. In this thesis the role of the petrol station for road users was investigated in order to find out if the petrol station was a potential hot spot. We performed an ethnographic field study at a petrol station and found that a great number of visitor activities took place at the petrol station.

The aim of this master thesis is to find out if young people and librarians think that reference groups can support public libraries to meet the needs of young people, and if the reference groups, which the librarians describe, differentiates from the young peoples requirements. I have made a qualitative study with a questionnaire to six librarians who have experience from reference groups and ten interviews with teenagers. The result showed that young people have many interests and needs which can be met from the library. The teenagers were positive to the library and many of them showed interest in having more influence on the library. Many would like to join a reference group, but on the condition that they would be offered real influence.

The structure of the Swedish public library field has been evolving during the last decades. The traditional mission of educating the citizens to become responsible, democratic and knowledgeable members of society has in a way led to the integration between public and school libraries. Lately new co-operational models have been under debate and a sense of resistance has arisen because of the economical and market influences. In parallel with closure of library branches new libraries have evolved in malls and wash houses and some with self-service with no use of librarians. This work shows how co-operation in rural areas finds the common goals for the people living there who are concerned about keeping the service needed including the public library and thus using existing means and crossing borders of commercial thinking.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate how the use of the IT-personnelsystem influences human resources and the new challenges and future requirements that may occur, while IT-personnelsystem is used more extensively in the HR-function.Previous research referred to in this study, has focused on how the HR-transformation has contributed to the development of an IT-personnelsystem, which has been used with increasing frequency. This use has created a significant change in the HR-function. This thesis focuses on investigating, describing and analyzing how the practice and development of the IT-personnelsystem meets the needs of the HR-transformation.This study uses qualitative research methods to investigate sixteen users? experiences and our understanding and conclusion is based on both semi-structured interviews and webb surveys. Initially deductive, later on our study took a more abductive approach.The result indicated a variety of uses for a specific IT-personnelsystem dependent on the users? function and positions and also how HR-activity was organized within the business.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate how the use of the IT-personnelsystem influences human resources and the new challenges and future requirements that may occur, while IT-personnelsystem is used more extensively in the HR-function.Previous research referred to in this study, has focused on how the HR-transformation has contributed to the development of an IT-personnelsystem, which has been used with increasing frequency. This use has created a significant change in the HR-function. This thesis focuses on investigating, describing and analyzing how the practice and development of the IT-personnelsystem meets the needs of the HR-transformation.This study uses qualitative research methods to investigate sixteen users? experiences and our understanding and conclusion is based on both semi-structured interviews and webb surveys. Initially deductive, later on our study took a more abductive approach.The result indicated a variety of uses for a specific IT-personnelsystem dependent on the users? function and positions and also how HR-activity was organized within the business.

Portable IT devices such as laptops, smart phones and computer tablets are becoming ever more ubiquitous. At the same time, the population of the Western world is growing older, with aging bringing about changes with regards to individuals' physical and mental capabilities. These facts raises important questions about how well suited these devices are for use by elderly people. This study focuses on the cognitive aspects of the devices' usability, using the concept of mental models to analyze the users' understanding of a computer tablet. It also draws upon theory of graphical user interfaces in its analyses.

The research objective of this thesis was to conduct a holistic evaluation of an operational information system. By holistic evaluation we mean that an equal focus was placed on both the system system perspective and its users user perspective, in the actual environment where the system and its users function contextuality. In addition, the methodological objective of the study was to test a new research approach in a real life setting. The participants of the study were twenty newspaper journalists employed at Göteborgs-Posten GP. The information system NewsLink is a manually indexed full-text database containing all articles published in GP since 1994.

This study focuses on the influence a user may have over his or her welfare service, personal assistance. A county, an assistance firm and a user cooperative are compared with the thesis that the organisation that surrounds the users shapes the possibilities the user have to influence his or her personal assistance. There are questions that try to answer if there are outspoken social goals within each organisation. Questions regarding influence of the user when she or he is choosing the assistance provider and the users possibility to influence and his or her power to decide who and when anyone works as an assistant are asked..

Swedish university libraries traditionally collect recreational readingmaterial only to support the teaching and research interests of theirinstitutions. However many university libraries hold a substantial yetunspecified collection of popular fiction. This thesis investigates theextent of these collections and examines academic librarians' viewsabout students' recreational reading in the academic context and theirattitudes towards the role of fiction and of readers' advisory inacademic libraries. The theoretical framework includes literature andresearch about the benefits of reading for pleasure, collections' rolesand readers' advisory strategies. The empirical material was gatheredthrough quantitative surveys sent to academic librarians in Sweden.The results show that academic librarians are positive about thebenefits of recreational reading for university students.

The aim of this study was to find out if hypertext structure has any relevance for the efficiency of information retrieval. An experiment, in which three variants of hypertext structure were compared, was carried out in the autumn of 1998. Three websites with different structures were constructed for this purpose: a sequential version, a hierarchical version and a webcluster version. 44 subjects, all students at the University of Lund, were randomly divided into three groups. Subjects were requiered to answer a number of questions using one of the three versions.

This Masters thesis investigates user education at academic libraries. The increased demand on students to keep themselves updated in the information society of today urges libraries to develop their user education, concerning both content and teaching strategies. The aim of this study is to examine user education at academic libraries, and the approach of librarians in their teaching. The research questions address how librarians implement the user education and what they focus on. We also want to explore what differences and similarities there are between the user educations, and if anything could be further developed within them.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the importance of a school library for youths, age 14-16, from their perspective. We intend to study how they use and experience the school library both for educational- and leisure related purposes. We also intend to inquire their possibility to influence their school library. The literature that has been used consists of material from research concerning youth culture and school library.

The purpose with this study is to examine school-leaders?, school-librarians? and teachers? expectations and aims for their school-libraries at two different schools in the city of Växjö. The study is based on these five questions:· How do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers think about learning?· What function does the school-library have?· What roles do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers have in the school-library?· How do school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers experience the co-operation in the school-library?· How would school-leaders, school-librarians and teachers wish that the co-operation should be?To be able to answer these questions I have done thirteen qualitative interviews and studied literature relevant to the subject. Three different theories are used as a theoretical framework; the traditional perspective, individual constructivism and social constructivism.

The purpose of this Masters thesis has been to study the changes made in shelf arrangement and library environment in a Swedish public library. The aim was to examine the reasoning done by the library staff regarding classification, the Swedish classification system SAB and changes in library environment. The basis of our study were three questions: 1. Why has Västervik public library made changes in the shelf arrangement? 2.

The aim of this thesis is to define digital library, and to investigate a relation between the construction of a digital library and user needs. The main questions to be answered are: 1 What criteria was used when constructing a digital library, particularly concerning issues like purpose, function, design, supply, services, resources and future development of the digital library? 2 How do the digital library system designers and system builders criteria correspond with those of postgraduate researchers? And what factors affect the use? A digital library is an enterprise that gives access to information stored digitally and directly available on the net. The crucial is that the enterprise has a control over collection of information and responsibility to make it available to a defined group of users. In order to investigate the relation between the construction of the digital library and user needs, I have interviewed five key people involved with the work with the digital library and twenty postgraduate researchers from the Gothenburg University.