The purpose of this master’s thesis is to investigate children’s librarian’s perspectives on children’s literature and reading of fiction books. This is a comparative study of Swedish and Lithuanian librarians. The main questions to be answered are how children’s librararians at public libraries motivate their selection and purchase of fiction for children and what kind of considerations there are behind the purchases. The thesis is based on four qualitative interwiews with children’s librarians in Sweden and Lithuania. The theoretical perspective of the thesis is based on a model of the three different approaches to children’s literature and reading - the pragmatic, the traditional and the emancipated. As a result we can see that all informants to a greater or less extent apply all of the pragmatic, the traditional or the emancipated views on children’s reading in selection and purchase of books, depending on several circumstances. Still, we can see that priority has been given to the emancipated and the pragmatic approach by the Swedish librarians, while the Lithuanian librarians give priority to the traditional approach. / Program: Bibliotekarie

This thesis deals with questions about competences and qualities that librarians inpublic libraries find that they need to be qualified suppliers of literature (books andmagazines).Our aim is to problematize the competence of the profession in relation to promotingliterature, knowledge in literature and reading habits. We want to know what librariansthemselves think about their own competences when it comes to supplying andpromoting literature. Does it have to be a leisure interest or do they get the possibility toread during working hours?What do librarians think it means to be a qualified promotor of literature and how dothey acquire the right competence? Do they believe that their competence correspondswith the occupational requirements? How much of their knowledge about literature andpromoting literature comes from personal interest and commitment?We primarily used the theories about competence by Per-Erik Ellström. One of thetheories is the one of implicit and explicit knowledge. We also used Daniel Goleman’stheories about emotional competence.We interviewed six librarians that all work daily with literature promotion. We foundthat our informants are all competent and very dedicated to their work and that theypossess many of the competences that Goleman call emotional. But they do spend a lotof their free time on work. We think it would be useful with more time for librarians toread books and develop their competence at work. It would also be useful with acommon strategy when it comes to literature promotion and also a common and generaldescription on what ‘knowledge in literature’ really means. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this essay is to try to find the differences and similarities of two public librariesin the town of Kristinehamn and the rural community of Vara during the year 1994. Especiallyinteresting was if the different political traditions of the two communities -left wing majorityin Kristinehamn and right wing in Vara- have influenced the forming of the public libraries.The comparison contains accounts from the annual reports produced by the libraries between1987 and 1994, a more thorough study of the activities and interviews with decision makers in1994. The interview with the decision makers indicates that there is a distinct difference betweenthe librarians and the rest of the informants, this distinction shows, that in a tight budgetsituation the librarians prefer not to cut down on staff while the other informants actuallyfavour to make cuts on the procedures handled by the librarians. The general opinionthough, is that they all agree that the role of the public libraries is to defend democratic rights.The final conclusion is that the material of this essay supports the opinion that the idea ofpublic libraries is stronger than the political differences in Vara and Kristinehamn.

The purpose of this paper has been to study the relationships and attitudes of a few teachers and librarians as to their co-operation in a combined public and upper secondary school library and to find out what circumstances there may be to exert an influence on their work. The paper has been based upon qualitative interviews with upper secondary school teachers and librarians as well as on studies of literature relating to our issue. We believe there may be different approaches to the learning process, as these are the relations and attitudes of two professions from different trades. That is why our point of departure has been Roger Säljö's theory about learning and, in our analysis, a few of Jean Donham van Deusen's ideas of joint planning and flexible timetabling. All respondents agreed that co-operation could be better, but the teachers were of the opinion that it must not interfere with their time. There was also some hesitation to letting the librarian take an active part in planning the teaching, but she was still regarded as an asset in the working party because of her great skills in information retrieval. Our research shows that a number of circumstances influence to co-operation. These can be summed up as follows:- different attitudes to knowledge, to the idea of a life-long learning and to an enquiring methodology- the attitude of the two managements towards co-operation- the teachers' experience of being short of timeTeachers and librarians equally agreed that the purpose of a school library should be to show the way to life-long learning and that school and library are together responsible for this task. / Uppsatsnivå: D

Weblogs, or blogs, are frequently modified web pages with a series of archived entries, generally in reverse chronological sequence. This thesis focuses on the rapid-growing phenomenon of weblogs and the fact that individuals with a background in library and information science are frequent users of weblogs. Since this is an explorative inductive study the ultimate purpose can be described as to find out what “blogging” as activity is about. The research questions posed are: Why do individuals with a background in library and information science use weblogs? How does their professional identity affect their blogging? And finally; how do they use the weblog to create networks with other bloggers?The empirical material consists of audiotaped interviews with five informants who are all employed in knowledge work, either as librarians or information specialists. All informants maintain each at least one active weblog. A theme that turned out to be central in the interviews is the possibility weblogs offer people to link to each other; my analysis therefore mainly relies on theories of networking. Additionally, the collection of data revealed that issues of self-identity and drawing boundaries were also of importance. Therefore the theoretical framework is also built around Goffman’s theories of identity and social interaction. The result of the study shows that blogging is a social activity intimately related to the informants’ profession. A weblog offers an individual the possibility of creating and expressing him/herself through different roles, not always known to the audience. In doing so the informants often use the role of the librarian. Simultaneously, the weblog is used to create and maintain relationships with other bloggers, relations that can be used as a resource offline. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the content in Swedish library weblogs. We want to examine what the posts contain, especially on the subject knowledge organization. Which themes do the weblogs have in common? How the weblog authors categorize their posts and how the readers use the comment function, are other questions we seek answers to in the thesis. We have performed content analysis where we created the code units during the process. Regarding the content in the analyzed weblogs we have come to the conclusion that it is not as closely tied to the specific libraries as we had thought. We can also see that the themes are reoccurring with minor variations. The number of categories differs between the analyzed weblogs. In many cases the category names are very similar. When it comes to the readers’ usage of the comment function it is clear that the posts seldom end up being commented. We have seen that the library weblog often is perceived as an excellent communication channel where the library can interact with their patrons. At the same time we feel that the potential of the library weblog is not fully used. The future of library weblogs is yet unknown and there are still many functions of the library weblogs left to explore. We believe that the most important thing for the survival of the library weblog is to get readers to the blog and to encourage them to interact. For what is a weblog without its readers? / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this study is to examine whether the image of the stereotype librarian has created conflict in young librarians´ personal identity and/or professional identity and if this has shown in their choice of clothes? Our purpose was to find out, with the help of their choice of clothes, the young librarians view of themselves as individuals and professional librarians. We have searched for the answers to the following questions: - Do young librarians experience that clothing at their workplace has any significance and if so, what do they want to signal with their clothing? - Do they experience that clothing and appearance has any impact on their personal and professional identity? - How do they relate, by their choice of clothes, to the stereotype images of the librarian? We have performed qualitative interviews with eleven young female librarians. As a theoretical framework we have used ideas and concepts from different areas of research; semiotics, social psychology, business administration and ethnology. The questions concerning clothing at the library have visualized the invisible conflicts that are inherent in the librarians´ professional role. The clothing can symbolize different conflicts; between the private and the public role, between being unique and blending with the crowd and between a “harmless look” or a professional look. Also, clothing can symbolize the conflict between the old introvert and the new extrovert professional role, between the old and the new generation of librarians and finally between a real librarian and the stereotype image. / Uppsatsnivå: D

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. We also discuss the debate about role-playing games and their position in society. We use Pierre Bourdieu’s theories about habitus, capital and taste and apply them to the librarians’ attitude towards users and literature. We place role-playing literature at the same level as popular literature. We describe the history of popular literature and the criticism against it and focus on fantasy literature. The scientific aspect of popular literature, in which we place role-play literature as well, has become more acceptable during the latest decades. The result of this paper shows that the librarians have a positive attitude towards role-playing literature at libraries and they feel that it can stimulate creativity and traditional reading as well as own writing. It can also attract people who don’t visit libraries regularly. The future of role-playing literature depends on the librarians’ willingness to familiarize themselves with the benefits and drawbacks of role-playing games and also how they market the games to their colleagues and the market of users. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to investigate how public library users consider the knowledge of the librarians and to examine what the users expect from the librarians. To begin with, we contemplate our own view of the librarians, their knowledge and what help we expect at the library. Realising that we do not expect particularly much from librarians, although we have studied to become librarians for two years, we assume that the regular library user does not expect much either. This assumption resulted in our decision to investigate this particular question. To gather information about how library users regard librarians and their knowledge, we handed out questionnaires to the users at a public library and interviewed five library users about their opinion on the knowledge of librarians and about how they view librarians in general. The results from these inquires were analyzed according to the hermeneutic methodology and compared to literature relevant for the subject. In conclusion we find that library users think that librarians mostly know practical work, like sorting and lending books and other media. Users also think that librarians know about literature, information seeking and that they are service minded. What the library users in our study wanted help with was finding books, information seeking, finding study material and practical tasks, such as interlibrary loans. The users think of librarians as calm, helpful and professional. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this investigation is to study how librarians experience bookcrossing. We focused on the two following questions: Which variations are there in librarians conceptions of bookcrossing as literature exchange and reading support activity? Which variations are there in librarians conceptions of bookcrossing compared to other methods of literature exchange and reading support? Bookcrossing is an international book club where you share your books by leaving them at public places. The thesis is focused on librarians’ conceptions and not the conceptions of members of bookcrossing. Fictional literature is central in our investigation. To answer the questions we conducted interviews with nine librarians at eight different libraries. By using a phenomenographical approach our analysis resulted in four categories of description for each question. For the first question the categories were: bookcrossing as publicity, bookcrossing as a new way of thinking, bookcrossing as being democratic and bookcrossing as an activity at the library. The second question resulted in the following four categories: bookcrossing as an alternative to other methods, bookcrossing needs development to be reading supportive, bookcrossing as a non serious event and bookcrossing as a different selection of books. After the second analysis three categories of conceptions emerged: bookcrossing as an advantage for the library, bookcrossing as a problematic method for the library and bookcrossing as unimportant for the library. The conclusion of this study is that librarians do not conceptualise bookcrossing as a good method for reading support. But the majority of them had a positive experience of bookcrossing and they conceptualise that bookcrossing results in positive attention in the media. / Uppsatsnivå: D