The aim of this thesis is to examine librarians' view on the knowledge and competence required at a small public library and how they look upon their education in retrospect. Library education in the 1970's and 1980's was mainly practical, a vocational training, but since 1995 the education results in an academic degree in Library & Information Science. Due to this, we focus on the ongoing generation shift in Swedish libraries as an aspect of knowledge and education. The empirical study is based on interviews with librarians working in minor public libraries. The informants form two groups, based on their education; “old” ones and “new” ones. The interviews deal with questions concerning librarians' knowledge and competence, the library education and how small public libraries might be affected by the generation shift. Different concepts of knowledge and competence are applied to the empirical material in order to characterize the required knowledge. The result shows that four areas of knowledge are outstanding in importance to both groups of librarians, i.e. information retrieval, social skills, literary knowledge and general knowledge. The two groups differ in how they describe and value their education. Older education is valued as more relevant than the new one to these librarians. Whilst the newly educated librarians stress information as a theme for their education, the older generation was trained to mediate culture. In the future, information is supposed to be emphasized at the expense of literature exchange and outreach library activities. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this thesis has been to investigate how librarians perceive nurses as a user group and libraries’ function for nurses. In order to achieve the study’s purpose six qualitative interviews with librarians working at medical libraries were conducted. The study has been performed with a phenomenographical methodological approach. Librarians have different perceptions of nurses’ as a user group, however the majority of them experience that nurses’ information needs have been increasing as has their use of medical libraries. The respondents perceive both barriers and facilities for nurses' information practice. The barriers include lack of time, motivation and organizational support. Facilities include education, increased access to information and changing attitudes. The informants perceive that medical libraries are able to support and improve nurses’ information practice through user customized training, target audience-focused information delivery via the web, communication, outreach work, cooperation and collaboration with other actors in hospital environments and good reference service. Three major categories of perceptions have been identified. According to category A medical libraries and librarians already meet nurses’ needs, overcome barriers and reach out nurses. Librarians are teaching nurses tools and techniques to obtain information. Nurses are given access to considerable amount of nursing literature. Libraries have also evolved some e-services with nurses in mind. Librarians are satisfied with their own effort. Within category B medical libraries aren’t able to overcome barriers completely. According to category C medical libraries will be able to do that thanks to nurses’, librarians’ and other actors’ changing attitudes.

In the paper we bring up and analyse the attitudes librarianshave towards youth and youth programs in the public library.The purpose is to raise awareness among librarians and tomake the process of change and development. We have usedsemi structured interviews in order to answer our researchquestions and conducted the interviews with five librarians incharge of the youth programs in different public libraries. Inthese interviews we asked about their views on youth as auser group, youth programs and how this affects theiropinions on the roles of the public library. We have also triedto see how the librarian’s opinions differ from how thelibrary runs their youth programs today.We have used two different models as theoretic framework.One of them has defined three different roles of the publiclibrarian and is constructed by Maj Klasson and the other is adeveloped version of Andersson & Skot-Hansen’s classicmodel of the roles of the public library made by Jochumsen,Rasmussen & Skot-Hansen. These models have been used tostructure the analysis of the material gathered from theinterviews.The informants in this paper show a positive attitude towardsyouth as a group and express a wish to make theirexperiences with the public library as good as possible.Overall they are satisfied with the way the youth programs intheir libraries work today but would like to develop it furthergiven more time and resources. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine librarian images and stereotypes in Swedish and American fiction, and to discover if there are any differences between these. The images and stereotypes are also compared to those revealed in previous research. The study is based on ten novels. Five of these are written by Swedish authors and portrays Swedish librarians. The other five are written by American authors and portrays American librarians. The books were published between 1995 and 2007. Discourse analysis is used as theory and method. Quotes that describe librarians are used to illustrate images and reveal stereotypes. The analysis generates seven discourses, in which the quotes are embedded. The image that appears from the material is mainly negative. It doesn’t seem to have changed much and predominantly agrees with the image revealed in earlier research. It is possible to detect differences in the ways librarians are described in the Swedish literature and the American, but the stereotype is basically the same. The librarians in the material are primarily described as insignificant females with a drab way of dressing. The librarians lack the ability to attract the opposite sex and have little, if any, sexual experience. In lack of social life, they take refuge in reading. Some of the characters consider their job as their calling. A theme that only occurs in the American fiction is the transformation of drab and sexually inexperienced librarians into stylish and sexually active women with power to attract men. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to see why there seem to be little interest in the management position at the public libraries. Since librarianship is a field that are proportionally dominated by women we chose to approach the study with a gender perspective. This study has excluded men and our main interest is the women’s point of view. It aims to see how librarians and chief librarians recognize management from bottom-up and what kind of restrictions we can find for women that make them unwilling to aspire for the position of management. Our theoretical choice fell upon Hirdman’s gender system and Westberg-Wohlgemuth’s theory of the sex marking process. The method used to collect the empirical facts consists of eight qualitative interviews executed on three different public libraries. The conclusions drawn are based upon literature and the empirical material gathered from the interviews. The result of this thesis is that the chief librarian position is marked as a male position from the women’s point of view. Additional findings are that women in the librarian profession don’t seem to be interested in becoming chief librarians for a number of reasons; the most prominent reason is the solitude of the position. The results also show that the women themselves tend to recognize the position as male and derive this view from a historical perspective. The conclusions reached in this thesis are that there seem to be too few incentives for women librarians to be interested in the management position. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the relationship between librarians and library support staff in public libraries regarding status, distribution of work and working climate. We were interested to know if there is a conflict between the two occupational groups and how it can be explained. We also wanted to learn what the future holds for the library in terms of professional categories and tasks according to library staff of today. This study is based on twelve qualitative interviews with four heads of libraries, four librarians and four library assistants. Three theoretical approaches were used in the analysis of the interview material: professionalization strategies, conflict theories and theories from group psychology. The results indicate that librarians consider library assistants as a group with low self-esteem and reluctant to change, and uninterested in further education. Library assistants find librarians to be individualists who ignore rules and regulations at the circulation desk. A national education for library assistants is by some respondents considered a good thing, by some necessary for the survival of the library support staff and is by some considered a half measure. Several of our respondents believe that library assistants gradually will disappear from the library in favour of professional categories with a university education. Crossing each other’s territory boundaries causes tension between the two occupational groups and is a source of conflict. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The following thesis will examine how a smaller library manages the prioritization of media between Swedish and 'minority language'. We are also interested in the challenges and problems that can occur in such work, as well as how the librarians think about their role in the integration process. We have studied this through several qualitative interviews with librarians as well as earlier related research. The results show that librarians display a high propensity of appreciation related to working with minority languages and consider this an important aspect of their profession – they fully ingratiate and accept the importance of helping the immigrant population in learning Swedish. However, our study also discovers several organizational problems that hinder this work, which mainly relate to a lack of funds and other issues related to resource inefficiency. The conclusion states the awareness and importance of providing media in minority languages, but is hindered by flaws in the systems surrounding the organization of public libraries.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how the Swedish daily press portraits librarians and the profession. I have used a discourse analytic study in my purpose to examine the image of librarians and the profession. I have analysed 34 articles between January 1, 2009 until January 1, 2010 from Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter, which are the two daily newspapers with the largest circulation in Sweden. I have used three major questions to answer the aim of my study: In what context do librarians and the profession appear in the daily press?What qualities are librarians assigned in the daily press?What views and attitudes about librarians and the profession appear in the articles?My analysis resulted in three discourses; discourse about librarians’ relation to literature, discourse about librarians and the labour market and discourse about librarians and information. My study concludes that the image of librarians and the profession in the daily press are versatile and mostly positive. Librarians are described as reading loving persons with a great knowledge in literature and information in their professional work. Another image of librarians is that they are useful as a resource to help and guide children and youngsters with social problems. The negative images in the daily press are for the most part about the future trends of the labour market.

The purpose of this study is to investigate librarian’s opinions concerning literature with state supported distribution and how to mediate and market these in the library. The types of mediation and marketing that have been studied are positioning, labeling and oral mediation.The study is qualitative with interviews at seven main public libraries in central Sweden. The respondents of the study were responsible for the literature with state supported distribution within the library.The study is based on a theoretical frame of reference containing theories from Jofrid Karner Smidt, regarding librarian’s mediation in libraries, and François Colbert’s theory on marketing planning for arts and culture.The results of our study showed that librarians have both positive and negative opinions when it comes to the literature with state supported distribution. They appreciate that the library receives new literature regularly and that it is literature that they would not buy for the library ordinarily. However, sometimes the literature from the state supported distribution is too niche for the users interests.Furthermore only two of the libraries in the study had a separate shelf for mediation of the literature with state supported distribution. The librarians themselves did not carry out any mediation effort or special marketing of the literature with state supported distribution, despite there being mediation operations for the rest of the libraries’ stock. / Program: Bibliotekarie

We studied how librarians would adapt to telework, the performance of job responsibilitiesfrom home. We found'that all duties could be accomplished. but to varied extents.Computerbased searches, interlibrary loans, acquisitions, indexing and telephone referenceservices are the duties most likely to adapt to telework whereas cataloguing andclassification probably are best performed in the ordinary workplace.Most duties would demand access to technical means of assistance when performed fromhome. Connections to the library's local network, directly or via modem, are requiredbecause it is unrealistic to expect librarians to telework with fewer tools than theyordinarily have available. Although librarians generally believe that teleworking will nothave a large irnpact on the operation of the library, most would like to telework.Whether teleworking is a viable strategy depends on the characteristics of the duties, thelibrarian's desire to telework, but also on the size of the library, the size of its staff, thelibrary's activities, and how work is distributed between librarians.