As public libraries in Sweden receive the bulk of their budget from local government funding, which has stayed static or, at best, seen small increases, libraries have been faced with inadequate resources with which to satisfy increasing expectations from users. As few libraries are over-funded in the first place, ways may have to be found to combat this situation. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine alternative sources of funding for Swedish public libraries, and my main focus of interest is that of sponsorship. The method used is a literature study combined with an empirical study, in which interviews were conducted with five persons each with long experience of working with public libraries. The literary study deals with the concept of sponsorship, and the motivations for companies to sponsor are also examined.

This Master's thesis concerns the classification of compact discs according to the Swedish classification system, SAB. The purpose of this thesis is to critically study and discuss category Y of the SAB-system and its application in Swedish public libraries. The classification system has undergone great changes from the first edition in 1921 until today. In 1921 there were no musical recordings in Swedish libraries, today they are responsible for a large part of the loans. We discuss how the system's category Y has corresponded with the musical development.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what role the new city library in Halmstad has for its users. The questions posed in this study are: What do the users actually do at the library? What roles are the most significant according to the users? Have the politicians succeeded in their intention of realizing a modern library according to the users? The theoretical starting point is Andersson?s and Skot-Hansen?s theory of four different roles of public libraries. In order to extend the model we added a fifth function; the one of aesthetical experience.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine in what way library users are depicted on images at two academic libraries; the University College of Borås Library & Learning Resources (BLR) and the Gothenburg University Library (GUB). 62 images, from websites and information brochures, are analyzed and the main questions are: How are users represented on images? What activities are shown? What is the difference between BLR and GUB? How can the consequences of the representations be understood? Little is currently known in the LIS-field about how images work as constructors of the social reality. The theoretical and methodological point of departure of the study is discourse analysis, new institutional theory and picture analysis.

The role-playing game attracts a growing number of practisers. The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine role-playing literature as phenomenon in libraries through librarians´ attitudes. The paper is based on qualitative interviews with eight librarians: one personal interview with two librarians and six e-mail interviews with six librarians at different libraries. The paper starts with a definition of the term ?role-playing game?, its different categories and genres and a description of its background.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what role the new city library in Halmstad has for its users. The questions posed in this study are: What do the users actually do at the library? What roles are the most significant according to the users? Have the politicians succeeded in their intention of realizing a modern library according to the users? The theoretical starting point is Andersson?s and Skot-Hansen?s theory of four different roles of public libraries. In order to extend the model we added a fifth function; the one of aesthetical experience.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the meaning the reading group of the public library has to a number of users. To fulfill the aim the following three questions have been formulated: 1) What do a number of users expect from the reading group of the public library? 2) Which approach/attitude or approaches/attitudes do a number of users have to reading and to talking about reading? 3) How do a number of users experience the ongoing reading group?The research is founded on qualitative interviews with five users that take part in three different reading groups in public libraries. The theories that are used is the theory of three so called strategies - the pragmatic, the traditionalistic, the emancipatory ? and the theory of flow.

The aim of this qualitative study is to examine how users of talking books perceive the possibility of downloading talking books from home without visiting the library and how this affects them. Three research questions were formulated:How do talking book users reflect on their library usage?Have the subject's' library usage changed since introduction to the download service?How have users experienced the service?To answer these questions, five semi structured interviews were conducted with five different users of talking books in Sweden. All subjects were currently using download services which they had gained access to from their local public libraries. In analyzing the interviews, a theory established by Henrik Jochumsen and Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen in Gør biblioteket en forskel (2000) was used.

An increasing number of scholarly publishers are beginning to make their journals available electronically. At the same time there is a growing amount of exclusively electronic journals freely accessible on the Internet. These are facts that librarians have to take into consideration.This master's thesis aims to describe the electronic journal and its role in Swedish academic libraries. In a review of current literature about electronic journals, the authors discuss their strengths and weaknesses, and their impact on scholars, publishers and libraries. To investigate the situation in Sweden, a questionnaire was sent out to 43 academic libraries.Questions were raised about the selection and acquisition of electronic journals, access, technology and economy.The results show that almost half of the 35 responding libraries offer electronic journals to their users.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the handling and shelving of graphic novels and adult-comics in Swedish public libraries, in order to find out if this type of literature is prioritized in the same way as other forms of literature. The study was conducted by photographing the Hci/uHci shelves at ten different public libraries to give an objective view of the shelving to later be analysed and compared. Inquiry sheets were sent to the photographed libraries in order to get the librarians view of their own comic book shelves and collections. We found that the state of the comic-shelves differed from library to library according to how interested and committed the librarians were. New research areas in the field of Library and Information Science are discussed and questions are raised about the future of graphic novels and adult-comic-books in libraries, about their place in the libraries and about how librarians and the users knowledge of this media can be improved..

The general view of learning has dramatically changed during the last two decades. Today we talk about learning for life and educate to meet the demands of the information society. This new view forces us to constantly relearn and develop new knowledge ? something which has resulted in large restructuring within the upper secondary school. New forms of teaching, where the pupils are given the opportunity to a more active search for knowledge, is developing.

The aim of this study is to investigate methods of collection development, the users? influence on selection and quality aspects, focusing on non-fiction literature in Swedish public libraries. To find out opinions of collection development, I use the method comparative literature study. Antonio Gramsci?s concept hegemony forms the theoretical background, and hegemony as concept is related to a library context by using Maj Klasson?s text on the librarians? different positions of authorities.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the accessibility and activities for dyslectic adults in public libraries in the Swedish county of Södermanland. The questions that were to be answered were four; to what extent do the libraries provide book material and special computer software? To what extent do activities occur? Does the library staff have awareness and knowledge of dyslexia and of activities for dyslectics? What are the obstacles for good service for dyslectic library users? Two methods were used. As a first step, a questionnaire was sent to thirty public libraries. The questionnaire elicited a low level of response, but gave in spite of this an overview of the situation for dyslectics in the libraries of the county.

The purpose of this Master`s thesis is to examine if the pur-chase of media in public libraries reflects the library's role in society. Two questions have been posed: ? What view of public library's role in society is reflected in the purchase of media? ? What principles guide the selection of media in public li-braries in Sweden? In order to investigate these questions, we used a question-naire that we sent out to a sample of 120 public libraries in Sweden. The analysis is based on a theory of three ap-proaches to the role of the library developed by Douglas Raber. The three approaches are the conservative approach, the populist approach and the social approach.

During the past decade, consumer health information-centers have been developed at the hospital libraries in Sweden in order to meet the increasing demand from patients and their relatives concerning consumer health information. In 1993, the hospital libraries in Falun, Västervik and Karlstad launched a consumer health information database called PION. The aim of this Master's thesis is two-fold. My first aim is to describe and discuss the principles of user-oriented evaluation. In my attempt to convey the theoretical discussion into the everyday life of librarianship, my second and most important aim is to conduct a user-oriented evaluation of the database PION.