The study examines the recountings of the work of five librarians at four public libraries in smaller municipalities in southern Sweden with their assignment of national minorities. Reports have shown that there are shortcomings in many libraries with regard to the fulfillment of goals described in the Library Act’s writing about national minorities. The study aims to investigate what activities representatives of libraries recount they work with, how they reason about national minorities’ visibility in the library space and how they view the library’s minority policy role. The method used is semi-structured interviews. The material is analyzed thematically. The theory guiding the study is R. Audunson et. als theory of libraries as a meeting place and its ability to bridge gaps in society. In the librarians’ recountings it appears that they primarily work with libraries as being low intensive meeting places which includes collections, expositions and visibility in the library space. Some of them work with events that can be described as high intensive activities. The results of the study cautiously suggests that it may not be sufficient to solely serve as low intensive meeting places in same ways as before in order to break old traditions of not having prioritized national minorities in the past. The study contributes with descriptions of librairians’ experiences of and thoughts on the subject at a time when national minority policies are being raised and the results may provide insights on how additional incentives for public libraries can be designed.

This bachelor’s thesis aim to examine the way librarians at public libraries work with improving their patrons’ digital competence. This was done by conducting semi-structured interviews with eight librarians, code them using a SWOT-analysis and then present them in relation to Jochumsen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Skot-Hansens Four Spaces model.   The result showed that time, resources and the librarians’ own interests are key to give satisfactory help to the patron. Age also seemed to impact the way the librarians took on learning new services the library offered. The younger librarians had an easier time trying it out themselves while the older wanted more instructions. The main problem the librarians saw was how to handle questions regarding sensitive information, the patrons’ money and documents to the bank or the government. Few libraries seem to have a policy regarding such questions. Still most of the librarians already saw work with digital questions as part of their normal routine. Rather than a change in work assignments they saw a change with how they were carried out and the nature of help the patrons’ needed, now there were more question regarding how things work instead of pure information questions. The question did not seem to be that of the librarians’ own competence but rather that of the patrons.

There is a general lack of information about how libraries manage crises, even though it has increased since Covid-19 it still is a very limited subject in LIS. The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to contribute information about how public libraries act and handle crises, particularly the debate whether or not the physical libraries should continue being open for the public or not during Covid-19 pandemic. The material for this thesis is made up of articles from the journal Biblioteksbladet. These articles all contained arguments for and against keeping the physical libraries open. The articles have been analysed with qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis. The theoretical frameworks used are capital theory and risk management. The results show that the arguments follow different themes. Those in support of keeping libraries open most often argue that libraries play a bigger role in society and are also a centre of information. Meanwhile, arguments against libraries being open are often themed around preventing the spread of infection, keeping the staff and visitors safe, and that libraries are not crucial for the country to survive.

This master thesis aims to critically analyze the state of digital libraries in Swedish academic libraries. With the branching theory of sense-making and the methodology of DELOS and IFLA/UNESCOs digital library manifestos, this thesis hopes to bring to light how far Swedish academic libraries have progressed. By accumulating quantitative data encompassing all digital academic libraries in Sweden, and qualitative data from a select few, conclusions regarding the aforementioned are drawn. Focusing on content analysis, this thesis analyzed the different components that can be said to constitute the digital library and compared them to the different manifestos that dictate what a digital library can be said to consist of. By employing the elusive sense-making theory as a general modus of mind, one can begin to understand thought-making processes behind the tapping of digital library resources. Results from this thesis found that some functions and components are present within all academic libraries in Sweden, but that the digital library primarily tends to focus on resource acquisition and not so much on resource presentation. User environments are not prioritized. Different aspects are presented in regards to mobile optimization, social media, information organization, information design etc. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies. / Den här masteruppsatsen syftar till att undersöka digitala bibliotek och digitala miljöer på svenska högskole- och universitetsbibliotek. Med sense-making som huvudsaklig teoretiskt ramverk och DELOS och IFLA/UNESCOs olika manifest gällande digitala bibliotek hoppas uppsatsen visa hur långt svenska bibliotek har kommit i relation till det digitala. Via samlandet av kvantitativ data från alla svenska akademiska bibliotek, och kvalitativ data från ett fåtal utvalda, kommer uppsatsen till diverse slutsatser. Med fokus på innehåll och funktion så undersöker uppsatsen vilka komponenter som kan sägas utgöra det digitala biblioteket i jämförelse med manifesten och deras ideala digitala bibliotek. Med hjälp av sense-making kan man få en förståelse för tankessättet och hur användare angriper de digitala resurserna. Resultaten från uppsatsen visade att det finns en viss grad av framsteg och utveckling som alla bibliotek har nått, men att den digitala satsningen oftast endast inbegriper samlandet av resurser och uppbyggandet av databaser snarare än presentation och design. Miljöer som gör att användarna frodas prioriteras ofta bort. Olika aspekter presenteras i relation till detta såsom mobil-optimering, sociala medier, informationsorganisation, informationsdesign osv. Det här är en tvåårig masteruppsats inom Arkiv, Bibliotek och museum.

This master´s thesis in Library and Information Science examines the experiences of children who read to a dog. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the interactions between the librarian, the readingdog-handler, the child-ren and the dogs and what the benefits from the interactions might be. The aim is also to examine how the child-ren express their literacy during the readingsessions and how to develop the readingsessions at a specific library. The author follows a reading dog project for seven weeks, in collaboration with a specific school and library. Action research was used as a research strategy, and since action research is done on the basis of practice, a coll-laboration with the participating children, the librarian and the readingdog-handler was significant in this study.The theoretical framework concists of theory and concepts from the sociocultural theory developed by Ro-ger Säljö, and human-animal studies with concepts from Donna Haraway. The method used to collecet data was qualitative interviews, participant observation, logbook and tutoring. A total of 33 observations was collected, 33 short interviews were conducted and 6 tutoring meetings. Also the author, readingdog-handler and the lib-rarian kept a log for this seven week long readingdog project. A total of five third grade children participated in this study.Important results are that the children view the readingsessions as a schoolbased activity, but they would also read to a dog in their spare time. The interaction with the dog and the relationship between the child and the dog are important for the readingsessions to work well. The readingsessions have the potential to let children express and develop their literacy in several ways, though in this study literacy was expressed mainly by tradit-ional reading of printed books. The thesis also discuss to what extent the participant children are allowed to be involved in planning and developing the readingdog-sessions. All of the children participating in this study had a positive experience of the readingsessions and felt that their readingskills improved by reading to a dog.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how interested the library sector is in digitalization. In an attempt to study this, I have studied the articles in Biblioteksbladet from 2012–2016. My starting point was that digitalization affects the Swedish libraries and that the subject therefore would have a prominent role in the library magazine. The aim of this thesis is also to generate knowledge about how digitalization affects the retail sector and the library sector to visualize similarities and differences between how operators from private and public sector are affected. Three text analytical surveys were conducted: a survey inspired by quantitative content analysis, a survey inspired by qualitative content analysis and a qualitative comparative survey. The agenda-setting theory was used as an analytic tool to analyze the interest in digitalization. Theories from the business field and previous research were used in order to compare how digitalization affects the retail sector and the library sector. The results of this thesis show that about eight per cent of the articles in the magazine from 2012–2016 is about digitalization. The subject is mentioned in all of the studied magazines except one. This shows that digitalization is treated to a considerable extent in Biblioteksbladet, which is in line with my hypothesis. My study also shows that digitalization is presented as a challenge to the libraries in the majority of the articles. This means that digitalization tends to be evaluated negatively in the material. It proved to be difficult to draw clear conclusions about the library sector’s interest in digitalization using these methods. The interest that appears in Biblioteksbladet doesn’t necessarily reflect the rest of the library sector’s interest. Another result is that there are several similarities between how digitalization affects the retail sector and the library sector. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of mobile libraries in Sweden, focusing on bicycle libraries. The questions proposed concern how public libraries handles such activities and how they are perceived by the libraries that engaged in them. The study maps out different types of mobile libraries and investigates how bicycle library perform and what role the mobile library plays as a tool for marketing and accessibility. The theoretical approaches are marketing analysis and discourse analysis. Methods used are text analysis of documents, interviews and observations. The results show that the mobile library is perceived as an important part of library activities, both as a tool to increase accessibly and as a marketing strategy. A library discourse that includes busses has been observed, in terms of both accessibility and marketing. Bicycle libraries is not yet included in a broader library discourse, as it is described as only a marketing activity. This is a two years master's thesis in Library and Information Science.

In this bachelor thesis the aim is to explore which barriers elderly visually impaired people can meet when they are borrowing audiobooks in the local library. Eight respondents were interviewed about their opinion of the service from the library and the information concerning this service. Two group interviews were held on two different occasions with three respective four respondents in each group and eight in-terviews were held by telephone. Studies of rules and guidelines in the society, and of texts about and by elderly impaired people, have been made. The analysis has been performed with a qualitative content analysis method. The result of the interviews is that books have a great importance in the respondents’ life and that it is of great significance that the service works smoothly. The respondents were not satisfied with the information from the libraries. Some of them have not had any information at all, neither of new books nor about the library’s service to the visually impaired. The respondents wish that the librarians were more responsive to their wishes. Criticism was also expressed about the form and quality of the audiobook and audio players.

Jag har valt att studera hur valet av barnlitteratur ser ut på tre förskolor. Uppsatsens syfte är att undersöka hur barnlitteraturen kommer till förskolan. Den väg som jag inriktat mig på är pedagoger på förskolor som är verksamma som läsinspiratörer via biblioteket. Jag undersöker hur de påverkar urvalet av böcker som finns för barnen på förskolan. Genom att undersöka vägen som litteraturen tar innan den hamnar på förskolan vill jag synliggöra valet som biblioteket och pedagogerna gör av böcker och se hur anpassad litteratururvalet blir till barnen. Mitt resultat visar att samtliga läsinspiratörer uttryckte en vilja att erbjuda barnen ett anpassat bokurval men de menade samtidigt att kommunikationen mellan biblioteket och pedagogerna var relativt liten, vilket möjligen gör det svårt att anpassa bokurvalet till barnen. / I have studied how three preschools are choosing literature. The purpose of the study is to investigate how books come to the preschool. The path that I focus on is educators at the preschool which are acting as reading inspirers through the library. I investigate how they influence on selection of literature that is made available for children at the preschools. By examining the path that literature takes before it comes to the preschool. I want to make the libraries and educators selection process visible to understand how adapted the books becomes for the children. My results show that the educators expressed their willingness to choose good and adapted literature selections for the children, but in the same time they considered that communication between the library and the educators was relatively small, possible making it difficult to adapt literature selection for the children.

This bachelor thesis in Library and Information science (LIS) aims to examine faculty perceptions of what constitutes and legitimizes an academic library. Academic libraries have experienced immense changes in the last several decades, mainly due to techno­logical advances such as electronic resources, but also the increase in students, teachers and researchers. Many libraries are trying to to provide new services and expertise to remain indispensable to users, which contributes to a fragmented image of academic libraries. This study addressed the following research questions: What are teachers’ and researchers’ expectations of an academic library? How do teachers and researchers think about access and resources? What are teachers’ and researchers’ perceptions of future academic libraries? The study was conducted using a qualitative approach where eight faculty members with experience of being both a teacher and a researcher were interviewed at the Faculty of Health and Society at Malmö University. The data was analyzed using an analytical framework of legitimacy and documentality deriving from Professor Joacim Hansson (2015), but adapted to fit the study. The analytical framework mainly contributed in clarifying which library resources and services can be considered either essential or mostly facilitating. The findings show that faculty perceives the academic library as crucial for their work, especially for giving access to printed or electronic literature, guiding users in how to find and value relevant information, assisting in publishing matters and in education. However, faculty also considers resources and supportive services intrinsically non-essential to teaching and research as relatively important, and truly values the personal contact with the librarians. The results indicate that academic libraries will persist in the foreseeable future, though an informed strategy is necessary.