The purpose of the study is to reach knowledge about how public librarians understands and describes environmental scanning as a working process in a Swedish public library. The study consists of 5 interviews with public librarians working within the same organization. The empirical material is presented in two ways. The first one is what aspects of the external world the librarians find important. The second is through a theoretical framework based on Magnus Hoppes model of environmental scanning, including communication and cognitive processes aswell as ways of analyzing information from the external world.

The aim of this study is to examine how public librarians in small Swedish municipalities experience their professional roles. As part of examining such an abstract subject as experiences we also examine what tasks they perform, which will function as a support of the analysis. The theoretical frame-work is based on librarian identities worked out by Anders Ørom and a model of professional roles worked out by Maj Klasson. The analytical procedure consists of both deductive and inductive viewpoints. The empirical material consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews with five librarians that work in public libraries located in municipalities with less than 12 500 inhabitants.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine which criteria are generally used to guide pub­lic librarians in their acquisitions' decision. The study went ahead in France, principally at La Bibliotheque municipale de Lyon. It also includes a view of some special library services in the social field.Twenty persons were interviewed and an attempt was made to divide their answers into three sections: acquisition routines and criteria for media purchase, how to receive the library visi­tors and their influence on the acquisitions, and, finally, the librarians' own opinions on the matter. One important question was whether censorship is applied and in that case, would it be a deliberately way of acting or rather a spontaneous reaction, more or less unconscious.Censorship in real or manifested through a self-preservative reaction turned out to be a factor closely dependant on the library's financial situation. Many librarians affirmed they would find useful some kind of a written practical library acquisition policy..

This essay is about possible causes to the female dominance in public libraries. We have focusedon the 20th century in Sweden and the development of public libraries during this time. Forthis purpose we have done a survey of three different cities, Uppsala, Jönköping and Skara,during three different years, 1938, 1958 and 1978. We have studied salaries, gender and titlesfor the employed at the head library in each city and then made comparisons between them.In conjunction, we have also studied how women were looked upon by the rest of society,regarding their education and work opportunities.To achieve a comprehension of the society's view of women we have, in the essay, put threedifferent theories of the so called "female nature" in center. The genderization in the labourmarket has also been set to discussion.A comparison between librarians, teachers at different levels, and postoffice employees, hasalso been made regarding their salaries during the years (1938, 1958 and 1978)..

The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to develop knowledge about how librarians experience their professional identity, argue for their competence and describe their profession based on their professional skills, tasks, and status. The method that is used to answer the questions of the study is semi-structured interviews with five public librarians. The theory used in this essay is Ørom?s six librarian identities plus Schreiber?s experience intermediate identity.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine seven public librarians? attitudes towards manga as a new kind of literature in public libraries. Manga is an art form, originally from Japan, but in recent years manga has become very popular in the Western societies. The main issue of this thesis is how the librarians? look at manga and what they think about manga.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to accomplish an understanding for how librarians purchase fiction literature in public libraries. To answer these questions, we have performed four qualitative interviews with librarians in three Swedish municipalities. We have also performed a smaller document study to give us an overview of the used guidelines at the selected libraries. The results of our survey have been analyzed on the basis of our revised version of Sanna Talja?s model The Interpretative Repertoires of the Music Library.

The aim of this thesis is to study the reading habits of Swedish librarians visualized by librarians from Götabiblioteken ? a collaboration of 14 public libraries in mid-Sweden ? focusing on the reading done on their spare time, even if work-related. We started with a survey sent out to 74 librarians in October 2013, answered by 56, and followed up by interviewing 7 of them in November.We tried to answer these questions:To what extent does the working librarians read on their spare time compared to before they started working?What literature do they read, now compared to before they started working?To what extent does their perception of what they should have read affect their private reading?In what way does a librarian in the beginning of their career differ in reading habits from the reading habits of a librarian with many years in the profession?The result of our study shows that most of the librarians read as much or more than before they started to work. They are more selective in their choice of literature and are affected by their work in it in different ways.

Bibliotekarierollen har diskuterats mycket på senare tid. Det tycks vara så att de bibliotekarier som arbetar på myndighets- eller företagsbibliotek fått högre löner och högre status än till exempel Folkbibliotekarier. Jag har därför valt att undersöka hur yrkesrollen och professionsutvecklingen ser ut för en speciell grupp myndighetsbibliotekarier nämligen domstolsbibliotekarier.Jag ställde upp två inledande frågeställningar: ?Har domstolsbibliotekarierna ett eget kunskapsområde?? och ?Är domstolsbibliotekarierna specialister eller generalister?? Min undersökning visade, att domstolsbibliotekarierna har ett eget kunskapsområde bestående av juridisk terminologi, rättskällor, rättsdatabaser, juridisk informationssökning samt EG-rätten och dess källor. Domstolsbibliotekarierna har valt både en specialist- och en generaliststrategi i och med att de blivit generalister på innehåll och specialister på sitt eget kunskapsområde.Mina huvudfrågeställningar var sedan: ?Kan man kalla domstolsbibliotekarieyrket för en profession?? och ?Hur ser professionsutvecklingen för domstolsbibliotekarier ut?? Jag tycker mig ha funnit tillräckligt stöd för att kunna kalla domstolsbibliotekarieyrket för en profession.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to describe how librarians inSwedish public libraries use Facebook and Twitter in themediation of literature. Our study focus on the librarians? role inthat process. The research questions are:? How do the librarians in this study regard mediation of literature through Facebook and/or Twitter in relation to othermediation strategies?? What goals and purposes do the librarians give in the selection of literature that they promote on Facebook and/or Twitter?? What do public librarians think about the future for mediation of literature through social media, how will it evolve?The methodology used was qualitative interviews.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how public librarians, including school librarians, express themselves about librarians in library journals. Questions asked in the study are: How is the knowledge, tasks and roles of librarians described? How do the librarians describe their own and others perceptions of librarians? Are there any contradictions in how the librarian profession is described and if so, what are they? 56 articles from three Swedish library journals, Biblioteksbladet, bis and DIK-forum in the period from 1990 to 2007, are analysed. The theory and method used is discourse analysis.

The theme of this thesis is the professional ethics of public librarians. Qualitative interviews have been conducted with fourteen public librarians, with the aim to investigate their thoughts·and opinions concerning professional ethics and their experiences of ethical dilemmas in professional situations.The result shows that the majority of the librarians often discuss problems concerning what's right or wrong but that the discussions are conducted on the basis of practical situations and not in terms of professional ethics. The majority have vague ideas of how the term professional ethics should be applied on the work of public librarians, though all the interviewees consider the professional ethical discussion to be important.We examine the librarians opinions and experiences of ethical dilemmas conceming four subject areas: the principle of the librarian as a neutral and nonrestricting information intermediary, the principle of equal treatment of all the library visitors, difficulties. concerning media selection and the problems based upon the librarians flexibility towards the intemal rules of the library. The librarians experienced the behaviour towards the visitors as the greatest problem.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine librarians opinions about media. Four questions are asked: What kind of different attitudes to new media has librarians had? How is new media discussed in relationship to each other in the debate? What mechanisms and underlying causes control the discourse for new media in public libraries? Does the discourse change over time, in that case, how? The theoretical background is theory about moral- and media panic and popular adult education. The media panic theory includes the idea that the same reaction occurs every time a new media is introduced. The theory about popular adult education is that the public need to be cultivated.

This thesis aims to study the impact of the transition from communism to democracy on the public libraries in Poland. The central areas of study are changes in: the organisation of the public library system, the role of the public library in society, the librarian's daily work and job situation and collection development. The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with public librarians, public library managers and researchers in Warsaw, Torun and Gdansk. The theoretical background consists of chapters outlining thoughts on democratic and communist library ideas and public libraries' responses to a changing society. The results show that the public library system has been affected by two major decentralisation reforms in Poland, leaving the libraries in the care of local governments.

Purpose: The purpose of the study reported in this thesis is to addto the knowledge concerning what public librarians do to meet theneeds of unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors, thereby helpingthem to develop and establish themselves in a new environment.What tasks, activities and tools do the librarians have at theirdisposal? What problems do they encounter? What values, normsand attitudes guide their work? Method: The thoughts andexperiences of six public librarians have been captured throughqualitative semi-structured interviews, the result of which has beenthematically analysed using notions of social capital and socialexclusion. Findings: Unaccompanied asylum-seeking minors facea number of challenges which the public library with its librarians,collections and various activities can assist in coping with byproviding the children with opportunities to increase their socialcapital and decrease the risk of social exclusion. Researchlimitations: It has for several reasons proven difficult to studyunaccompanied asylum-seeking children as a distinct group, whichis why this study also uses material that deals with refugees as awhole. A significant amount of the latter are undeniablyunaccompanied minors, an especially exposed and vulnerable typeof refugees.