The purpose of this study is to explore how the role of the public librarian can be seen in terms of social interactions with visitors, how they relate to trust and how it interacts with social capital. There is a trust in libraries that can contribute to social capital in society, but for public librarians, the complex social function that takes an increasing role in library activities can constitute a great responsibility and involve challenges on the individual level. In the discussion about trust in public libraries, it is therefore important to study the librarian’s perspective to highlight aspects that might otherwise not be visible in a Swedish context, which more often examines user perspective or the level of trust in libraries in society at large. This study takes an explorative approach on the social role in public librarianship, investigating the possibilities and difficulties concerning trust. Semi-structured interviews have been conducted to collect statements from six librarians at various public libraries. This study uses symbolic interactionism as a theoretical tool to understand librarians as individuals in their professional practice, and to create an increased understanding of their experiences. The results show that the social function is both complex and has a significant role for the participants. The work around safeguarding trust is about helping people and being accessible in different ways. The participants must be creative in their professional role as the social challenges can look very different based on different situations.

Det övergripande syftet med denna studie var att utforska det hälsofrämjande arbetet vid bibliotek som genomförs genom biblioterapeutiska metoder. Vi har utgått från följande treforskningsfrågor: 1. Vilka former av biblioterapeutiskt arbete har respondenterna erfarenheter av? 2. Vilka kunskapsbehov har bibliotekarier som arbetar med biblioterapi och hur förhåller de sig till de utmaningar som finns? 3. Upplever bibliotekarier att arbetet med biblioterapi har förändrat yrkesidentiteten? Vi har använt oss av semistrukturerade intervjuer med öppna frågor. Ett kriterium vi hade var att hitta bibliotekarier med praktiska erfarenheter av biblioterapi. Vi analyserade materialet med hjälp av tematisk analys och identifierade tre huvudteman, nämligen: 1. De biblioterapeutiska arbetssätten. 2. Erfarenhet eller kompetens. 3. Yrkesidentiteten. Vi analyserade empirin utifrån dessa teman och lyfte fram de delar från intervjuerna som hade relevans för vår studie. Resultaten visade att majoriteten av respondenterna arbetar med utvecklande biblioterapi som passar de flesta grupper av människor. Det mest framträdande från intervjuerna var att litteraturen har en central roll när det kommer till att arbeta biblioterapeutiskt, både när det kommer till val av litteratur men även hur man bearbetar den valda litteraturen. Det råder delade meningar kring vad som behövs i form av utbildning hos våra respondenter. Samtliga respondenter verkar ha uppfattningen att biblioterapi har “förstärkt” deras yrkesidentitet. Endast två av respondenterna kände att de har stöd av sin chef och en har det inskrivet i sin arbetsbeskrivning. Det råder konsensus i gruppen av respondenter om att inte använda sig av självhjälpslitteratur.

Bibliotherapy is activities centered around how texts can affect the reader rather than exploring the meaning of the text itself. There are some different theories/terminology regarding bibliotherapy presented in this thesis. Bibliotherapy can be categorized after how it is organized or the process that is thought to take place within the individual/s. This wide range of categorization offers complexity to the term.  The purpose of this thesis is to examine attitudes towards and the use of bibliotherapy as a method within Swedish public libraries. Furthermore, when used, what forms of bibliotherapy have or are occupied, as bibliotherapy is a complex term and can encompass several different methods. To answer the purpose in this thesis, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six librarians who have worked with bibliotherapy or something similar at Swedish public libraries. The analysis of the interviews identified several recurring themes. These themes relate to the organization of bibliotherapeutic activities such as target groups and environmental factors or the perceptions around bibliotherapy such as importance of education and bibliotherapy as a controversial term. The most prominent form of bibliotherapy occupied by the public libraries where the interviewees work are activities organized in groups, using fiction with focus on group discussions. This can be categorized as the theoretical forms interactive and creative bibliotherapy. The interviewed librarians perceive that this activities can affect users, e.g. as developing, escapist and social, this relates to the theory about the bibliotherapeutic process.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how disturbing behaviours in Swedish public libraries have been looked upon in the library journal Biblioteksbladet during the years 1968 and 1999. The empirical material consists of 37 articles published in Biblioteksbladet. The main questions posed in this study are: how have disturbing behaviours been discussed in the journal, what have been seen as disturbing, and what causes to the behaviour has been emphasised? Which discourses can be traced, and who have had the possibility to express their views? The theoretical and methodological framework is based on both Michel Foucault’s and Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theories. In addition to this Foucault’s theories of power as a form of social control is used. The analysis shows that three discourses have occurred during the period. During the 70’s a material discourse, focusing on materiel variables such as architecture and physicalform, had a hegemonic position. Contemporary with this, there also was a social discourse, focusing on social problems primarily among suburban adolescents as the origin of the problems. During the 80’s the discussion declined, and simultaneously a liberal discourse was formed. In the liberal discourse, disturbing behaviours were not seen as a problem, and during the 90’s the question of disturbing behaviours almost disappeared completely from the agenda.

The aim of this bachelor's thesis is to examine how medical libraries use user studies and their results to develop their activities, as well as how they view their opportunities to clear the barriers users in user studies find that they have in their information seeking. The method used in the study is semi-structured interviews with five chief librarians at five different medical libraries in Sweden. The empirical data was analysed using qualitative content analysis. The theory used for analysing the results is Vedung's five models of use of evaluation: instrumental use, enlightenment use, legitimizing use, tactical use and ritual use. The result shows that medical libraries both take part in the results of user studies conducted at national level and own user studies. The respondents state that user studies are important and that they fill a function of finding out what users think about their activities. The results of user studies are mainly used as enlightenment, but also instrumental and legitimizing. The opportunities to clear barriers in the users' information seeking are many, but the most suggested is through marketing efforts. The conclusion is that user studies very well can be seen as a tool for developing the activities of medical libraries. If one uses the results of user studies in the instrumental, enlightening and legitimizing way that Vedung recommends and which the librarians in the study do in most cases, they can be very useful.

One of the main preconditions of this thesis is that identity is a relational process. Another precondition is that the process of constructing a librarian identity begins when students of Library- and Information Science (LIS) categorize themselves based on their belief of what the librarian profession is. A third precondition is that librarian stereotypes are categorizations of what is means to be a librarian. Their simplified construction makes them hard to change. In order to understand the process of constructing identities in the librarian profession two narratives on what it means to become a librarian are identified – one narrative is from the LIS discipline and one is from popular culture. By combining Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis with Butler’s theory of subversive performativity and social identity theory, ten bachelor and master theses by LIS students are analyzed. Five theses investigate the librarian identity and five investigate librarian stereotypes in popular culture.This thesis finds that the whereas stereotypes re-produce gender as power relations, telling a story of the public librarian as feminine and lacking status, the discipline’s narrative on public librarian also equals to these gender structures. The same hegemonic masculinity may affect how future librarians identifies themselves with their profession. In accordance with the device that we are not born librarians, we become one, this thesis proposes that knowledge of social structures behind how librarians are portrayed can give librarians power over their own identification process.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain an understanding of whether or not the concepts of users’ need and quality stand in contradiction to one another when public librarians are purchasing fiction literature and if there are any differences between small and large municipalities. Through qualitative interviews we aim to identify how public librarians in Sweden use these concepts in the process of choosing what fiction literature to acquire. We interviewed six librarians responsible for purchasing fiction literature, three from smaller municipalities and three from larger municipalities. We then analyzed with the help of Sanna Taljas theory The Interpretative Repertoires of the Music Library and concepts from earlier research. Instead of repertoires we used the library collection in our analysis model, the general collection, the alternative collection and the demand driven collection. We identified a various amount of values to describe the users’ need and quality, which we placed in our three collections. The results of the study are in line with some of the earlier research we have used in this study, but there are also new interpretations regarding the concept of quality. The idea of what quality entails has obviously gone through a transformation over time and our study shows that quality today is often measured in the context of the reader. We have also identified a number of working methods regarding users’ need and quality that differentiates the smaller municipalities from the larger.

The outbreak of the corona pandemic has led to various restrictions within society and thus also within higher education. In March of 2020, all teaching at colleges and universities in Sweden became remote. This included library instruction. The aim of this study was to describe the teaching academic librarian’s role due to the corona pandemic and the transition to distance education it has entailed. The study applied Huvila’s terms work role and work task together with Kuhlthau’s levels of instruction as well as a model of emerging roles for academic librarians identified by Vassilakaki and Moniarou-Papaconstantinou as its theoretical framework. A mainly qualitative study was carried out. A questionnaire was sent to teaching academic librarians nationally. This resulted in 61 responses. Data gathered were analysed using conventional content analysis. The study’s results indicate that the role has changed due to changes in how tasks are carried out, for example how the library instruction is carried out, cooperation with faculty, requirements regarding technological competence, the use of digital learning resources and how the students’ needs are highlighted. The study’s results also indicate that this transformation will remain to some extent, and that blended learning will become more common.

The Royal Library of Sweden (KB), which serves as the national library in Sweden, decided in November of 2008 to start using DDC instead of SAB. For a long time, SAB was used as the main classification system in Sweden across all types of libraries. The reasons for this decision were among others that it would help swedish libraries to become more interconnected with libraries in other european countries, who already use DDC. Another reason for the decision is that DDC already has a support network and regularly gets new editions and updates. But now all of the university libraries in Sweden have switched to DDC in some capacity, for either the entire or parts of the library's collection. Public libraries however mostly still use SAB for both their collections and classification. The purpose of this study, which takes place in the spring of 2021, is to examine librarians preferences and opinions about these two systems. Semi-structured qualitative interviews with a total of six librarians across four different academic libraries in Sweden, have been conducted to accomplish this. For this study, a number of psychological terms have been used as a theoretical framework to analyze the librarians opinions. These terms are: preferences, stability, trends and mere-exposure. The findings show that a majority of the librarians prefer SAB over DDC. Moreover they also considered that The Royal Library of Sweden made the correct decision to switch to DDC.

The aim of this thesis is to examine the current situation in regards of librarian - patron conflict at Swedish public libraries. The Swedish library law requires libraries to be open and provide information for all people. But with this open-door-policy the people working at the library are vulnerable to potential threats and violence from the public. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with six librarians at three different libraries in the Västra Götaland region. The questions asked during the interviews regarded what kind of conflicts took place at the libraries and what safety precautions the libraries had to handle conflicts. Repeated themes could be noticed at all the libraries that participated in the research. The two most notable groups that could be identified as “problem groups” were young people and disadvantaged groups. The size and the budget of the library had a significant effect regarding what kind of security services could be purchased. The findings of this research showed that the libraries have several safety precautions in place already. Even with regards to budget cuttings there were other ways the libraries worked to guarantee the safety of its employees.