The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine the profession of librarianship by studying tasks in Swedish public libraries. The method is a textual analysis of articles inspired by the critical discourse analysis of Norman Fairclough. The theory applied consists of the profession theory of Andrew Abbott and the gender theory of Yvonne Hirdman. The questions raised are: how do librarians speak about their tasks, which discourses can be constructed and how can profession theory and gender theory explain the result.

The aim of this study is to illustrate conceptions held by librarians and library and information scientists about weeding practices of printed books in public libraries. The study has been carried out by performing a series of qualitative interviews with librarians and by study of earlier research relating to the subject of weeding. The results have been analysed by utilizing a textual analysis method called idea and ideology analysis using so called dimensions to analyse and structure the results. The results indicate that weeding at Swedish public libraries is carried out by a mixture of objective and subjective methods, with certain statistical elements. Weeding procedures mainly appears to be legitimized according to what one refers to as knowledge of the local community, although lack of lending are cited from time to time.

This master thesis deals with events, dynamics and problems of mediated information seeking within the context of a new information service called "Book a librarian". The study, based on a survey and interviews both in academic and public libraries and participant observations in academic libraries, has its theoretical base in the cognitive theory of information retrieval interaction. The cognitive view is used to throw light upon the need of an ongoing dialogue during the session in order to detect the information needs of the user and to conduct a successful retrieval of information. The communicative interaction is seen as threepart interaction between the intermediary, the user and the information system, where the current cognitive states of all three participants are involved. The study shows that the cognitive obstacles for a successful mediation and information retrieval are mostly connected to participants current knowledge of the subject and of the retrieval techniques.

This is a master thesis from Uppsala University in collaboration with B Locket AB (more known as www.blocket.se). B Locket AB is a large ad-company from Sweden, located in Stockholm.Search engines on the market today are becoming more and more complex. When they were first introduced, they only had one function and that was to produce search results containing the string that the user had typed. Today, users want it to be able to spellcheck, produce more results and sort search results on specific fields as well. Preferably, all these features should not affect the performance as a whole.The reason to why these demands have come up is that users are getting more and more used to internet services as a whole and they want everything to be as easy as possible.The user ability has become a substantially more important area in the computer industry and this needs to be taken into account when it comes to B Locket AB and its search engine.

The subject of this thesis is the history of the library at The Göteborg Museum of Art. The aim of the thesis is to depict and analyze the emergence and the expansion of the library?s holdings until 1939. To fulfill the aim, two questions are asked. The first question is: Is it possible to argue that the library?s holdings were collected to document the entire world of art? The question is formulated in relation to a comment by Susan Wyngaard.

This master thesis is about access to literature translated into Swedish sign language for deaf at the public libraries. It is by now a well-known fact that there is produced very little literature in sign language for deaf. This is so even though the policies for the library nationally and internationally, and the public law for libraries in Sweden says there should be literature available for all groups of disadvantaged people. People who have problem reading ordinary ink books have the right to get the book adapted into a medium accessible for them. The goal of the Swedish law for disadvantaged says that in 2010 Sweden should be accessible for all irrespective of weather you are deaf or not.

This master's thesis reports on our investigation of how the public librarian's professional identity is formed and what it is formed of. We have considered factors such as: education, competence and daily tasks. In order to fulfil this aim we have used a literature study on concepts such as competence, education, professional identity and profession. We have also carried out an empirical study where we have interviewed nine librarians on public libraries. The method of analysis is qualitative.

Usability is a well-known term in system development. Today both consumers and organizations aim to increase usability. The purpose of the study is to gain knowledge about inexperienced users? interactions with websites and concretize that knowledge for future studies.Interviews have been conducted within two areas where experienced web developers with extensive programming knowledge brought know-how while inexperienced users without any programming knowledge have given their views. A number of existing tools for web publishing have been analyzed.

The topic of this essay is information seeking for children and young people in municipal libraries. This is based in the growing need for information seeking skills in the Information Society. Policy documents on the topic are scrutinized and related to a concrete praxis. Data has been collected through two case studies; one carried out in Ronneby and one in Trandared, Borås. These cases where chosen because of the existence of a local policy for library skills and information search for 6 to 12-year-olds.

The aim of this thesis is to study the views of public librarians on the subject of controversial video games and how they work with them at the library. The purpose of the study is to answer these questions: What content is controversial in video games according to the librarians? How do the librarians handle the controversial games at the library? Does it exist a conflict between the users and the librarians about the controversial video games? Is it possible to see any underlying reasons or tendencies in the librarians answers? Five qualitative interviews were performed to answer these questions and the collected data was analyzed using the terms, value rationality and instrumental rationality which were collected from a theory by Geir Vestheim. The results showed that the librarians see violence, sexism and racism as controversial content in video games. They handle the games at the library by limiting the access for children with age limits and by not buying the most controversial games in some cases.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to increased knowledge concerning students? information seeking in an electronic environment. Using a qualitative approach; focus groups interviews, a total of nine nursing students were interviewed in two groups. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed with an analysis tool based upon Lucy Kuntz?s, Gary Marchionini?s and Carol C Kuhlthau?s models of the information seeking process.

The purpose of this thesis is to study the attitude towardscomics among librarians as well as their personal image ofthe overall attitude towards comics among librarians and themanner in which the attitude of the librarians affects how thecomics are treated in the library.I have performed this study with a qualitative approach andhave interviewed a total of five librarians working in twodifferent libraries.I have founded the theoretical base for my research in anumber of historical attitudes towards comics and thencompared these attitudes towards the answers given in theinterviews as well as prior research found in three theseswritten by Magnus Johansson, Sarah Johansson and KarinEsaiasson.The results of the study is that traces of most of thehistorical attitudes can be found among all of the interviewedlibrarians but that none of them are harboring any negativeattitudes towards comics themselves. On the other hand thestudy does imply that the image of the librarian who onlythinks that comics are meant for children is still very muchalive in the collective subconscious of the librarians.The study also shows that while librarians of today tend tohave a neutral outlook in comics the historically subpartreatment of comic in the libraries and the subsequent lack ofacademic support on the subject have made it necessary forthe librarian in charge of the comic-section to have apersonal interest/liking for comics to be able to do a goodjob..

Over 80% of Sweden's population lives in urban areas, and half of the country's forest visits will thus be in urban woodlands. Social values ??- how the individual experiences the forest, and the impact of the forest visits on individual health and well-being, are pointing to the importance of managing the urban woodlands.When there comes to the cultivation of the urban woodlands there are usually many opinions to consider.This study aims to investigate the various opinions on the use and forestry in an urban recreation area in ??the City of Trollhättan. The study addresses both general and in four cases specific suggestions on management methods.Data was obtained from both quantitative and qualitative study through survey, interviews and discussions with the users of the recreation area.Trollhättan's goal with the recreation area is to make it accessible to local residents. The users are mainly influenced by the accessibility therefore clearings and thinnings are appreciated.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between librarians and library support staff in public libraries regarding status, distribution of work and working climate. We were interested to know if there is a conflict between the two occupational groups and how it can be explained. We also wanted to learn what the future holds for the library in terms of professional categories and tasks according to library staff of today. This study is based on twelve qualitative interviews with four heads of libraries, four librarians and four library assistants. Three theoretical approaches were used in the analysis of the interview material: professionalization strategies, conflict theories and theories from group psychology.