The aim of this master thesis is to study the students usage and experiences of the reference services at the university library at Linköping University. The four questions that I seek answers to are: - What kind of help do the students most often ask for at the reference desk? - To what extent do the students use the reference services for their studies? - What are the students experiences of the help they receive at the reference desk? - What are the students experiences of the treatment they receive from the librarians at the reference desk? I have studied literature that describes reference work and evaluation of reference work. I have also studied Christian Grönroos theory of service quality. I have distributed questionnaires to students at Linköping University.

Today, "the digital library" is the common way of describing a managed collection of information, with associated services, stored in digital formats and accessible over a network. Digital libraries have mainly been developed at research libraries, but during the last few years public libraries have started to offer similar services.The aim of this Master's thesis is to study how the Swedish public libraries plan to develop their digital libraries according to their mission statements, and in what way they have implemented them at their web sites. 21 public libraries, the largest in each Swedish county, were investigated.The library mission statements are investigated to find out in what terms the digital libraries are described and to what extent. The library websites are examined with respect to what kind of digital services are offered, to what extent they supplement or replace the physical library, and if there are new digital services not found in the physical library.In most mission statements the digital library is referred to in sweeping terms like "IT activities" and "new media". However, a few of the libraries clearly regard the digital library as an important part of the future operations, speaking of it in well defined and extensive terms.The public library websites are relatively homogeneous when it comes to services supplementing physical library activities, like web access to the library catalogue and links to other library catalogues.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to describe how Swedish public libraries use Web 2.0-tools and their experiences of using the tools. Focus of the study lies in the contact between public libraries and their patrons on the Web 2.0-tools. For the purposes of the study, the use of weblogs and MySpace were chosen for examination. The methodology used for this study was qualitative interviews.

The main purpose of this Masters thesis was to examine how the Internet and other electronic sources have affected public librarians use of printed reference sources. During the last couple of years the use of the electronic sources - in particular the Internet has become more established in the Swedish public libraries. Our aim was to examine if and how this has affected the use of the printed reference sources. This has been examined on the basis of the following factors: the gender and age of the librarians and how long they have served in the library. We also examined if the size of the library affects the use of the printed and the electronic reference sources and also which factors that are most important when librarians acquire reference sources.

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.

Ten years ago the public computers with Internet access were introduced in the public libraries. The purpose of the public computers was to give the possibility of searching information. Along with the Internet came also communication media like chat and e-mail. This type of communication was a new function for the libraries and the reactions among the librarians were mixed. It has been a source of big frustration and attempts to block it has not succeeded.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to compare the perception and significance of reference work in two countries, Sweden and Germany. This will be achieved by means of a literature review of previous research literature and public documents and a content analysis of articles from two library journals.A first step was to examine the historical development of reference work in the selected countries. In connection with this there proved to be distinct phases in the discussion regarding reference work. These phases with their specific discourses, themes and emphases reflected and thus later were confirmed in the second part of the study.The results show that despite some similarities there are also quite a few differences in how reference work is perceived in both countries. For Sweden, the idea of reference work was introduced relatively early.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the accessibility and barriers of public libraries to intellectual and mentally disabled children and young people. This we will do by examining whether the library staff acts according to policies of the libraries. Our method has been qualitative interviews with library staff and we have also observed the environment, media and marketing of these libraries. As a theoretical starting point of the analysis we use Michael Buckland?s different aspects of access to information.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to present a survey of how Swedish libraries provide information services for children. In this thesis ?information? means non-fiction material and ?children? do not include preschool children. The method used is knowledge overview and the material (mostly Master theses in LIS published January 2001-June 2006) is related to user studies of children as information seekers.

The competition for people´s attention becomes harder and harder. If the libraries want to continue to attract visitors it´s important that their business is promoted. The purpose of this thesis is to in-vestigate how two public libraries work with marketing. The study is based on a marketing model, introduced by Philip Kotler and further developed by Eileen Elliott de Sáez. Kotler believes that marketing is a social process and that everything can be promoted.

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.

The aim of this master thesis was to find out about librarians opinions of childrens libraries on the Internet, if it is a resource to reach children. Qualitative interviews were conducted with three librarians who had participated in the construction and development of childrens libraries on the Internet. IT and the Internet play an important role in childrens lives and children are using it to a greater extent. Libraries have begun to integrate IT and Internet into their services and are offering service on the Internet. The public library websites are usually for grown-ups and very few are directed to children.

The aim of the paper is to examine how public libraries can develop their services for children with ethnic minority backgrounds as a user group. This is achieved through studying the conditions for library services provided for children aged 9-12 in this group by public libraries in suburbs densely populated with ethnic minorities. The paper uses both a literature review and empirical research on the community libraries in Rinkeby and Rosengård as well as the town library in Lund. Services potentially available to these groups are analysed and discussed in the later chapters. The overall conclusion is that those services provided for ethnic minority children are largely the same as those provided for in children library services in general.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the mobile library development in Sweden since the start in Borås, Sweden in 1948. We have concentrated on three six-year periods. Our aim has been to describe a part of the mobile library development. We wanted to research the background of the said development. To do this we also studied the library and overall development in Sweden during the same years.

The main purpose of this study was to establish to what extent undergraduate students use reference services, what knowledge they have about those services and what their views of them are.The survey took place at Lund University Library, UB1, the main library responsible for collections in social sciences, humanities, theology and law. A total of 476 undergraduate students were asked to fill in a questionnaire, 273 accepted. The study is quantitative and was carried out during the autumn semester, 1996.The results show that the service used most frequently by undergraduate students is the reference collection. The least used service is the Internet, more than 50 percent of the students never use Internet at the University Library. In general, students are very pleased with the service given by the reference librarians, and with the collection of reference books.