The purpose of this master thesis is to describe and analyse Gerda Meyerson's educational project for young working-class women in Stockholm between 1898 and 1923. In 1898 Meyerson founded a home for young working-class women where her project could be implemented. It is the educational practises at this home and Meyerson's own words about working womens way of life thats in focus of this investigation. From a class and gender perspective the thesis examines the problems, the solutions and finally the goals of Meyerson's intentions for the young women. The problems were mainly the womens lack of self-esteem and bad moral reputation in society. In order to change their way of behaving and thinking, and thereby improve their reputation, Meyerson encouraged the women to move to her homes and there attend different uplifting courses and lectures and read, what was considered, sensible books. Important were also the social interactions between women of different classes, which took place at these homes. These social interactions were highly educational and were intended to change the womens, often, negative attitudes towards each other. The young women should thereby be fostered towards a lifestyle of cleanliness, moral female superiority and ultimately, marriage and motherhood. These ideals stemmed mainly from the middle classes' values of womanhood, which Meyerson represented. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this masters thesis is to learn how an organization has solved its information management via intranet and document management. The purpose is to identify what different types of information are made available via an intranet, how this information is structured and what functions the intranet includes. Conventions, directions and advice about intranets and document management were studied, with the purpose to compare whether the systems of the company correlate with these. Other issues considered in the thesis, are how the employees of the organization use the intranet and how the document management is organized. To get an understanding of these questions the structure and functions of the intranet were studied empirically and a questionnaire on what the employees need and use, concerning the intranet, was sent out to 130 employees. 56 of these were handed in and processed. In order to get a deep understanding of the topic, the case study was used as a research method. The main theories are taken from Information Management, including Choos cycle of information processes. The results of the study show that theories and conventions have been followed to a great extent but in some cases the categorisation and structures of the interface of the intranet do not fully correspond. Among the findings are that the search functions of the intranet are underused and that the company lacks a plan for their intranet. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This essay is a survey of thirteen user studies performed in the field of image retrieval. The purpose is to try to distinguish principles that should be kept in mind when wanting to make image databases available for a wide and varied group of users. The essay tries to answer two questions, namely: Are there any results in accordance among the different studies? What in the user studies should be considered when it comes to how content description, interface and functions for searching can be designed when creating systems for image retrieval? Each study is first reviewed on its own, and then a comparative analysis of all the studies is carried out. Derived from the result of this analysis, the conclusion is presented in the form of a row of suggestions to which aspects are to be suitably included in the design of image databases. The results show that actual object and people is the most prominently used content descriptor followed by descriptors for time, location and event. Abstract elements is found to be a descriptor not commonly or even readily used. Being able to compare images visually on-screen, the possibility to decide in which order the retrieved images are shown and the inclusion of CBIR-techniques are some of the components found to be important when it comes to interface. When it comes to search functions filters, truncation and subject searching are among the functions that are found important. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this thesis is to study librarians attitudes towards fiction and reading. I have examined librarians fiction reading habits and how they handle the expectations that users may have regarding their knowledge in fiction literature. There have been many studies concerning the librarians information literacy. This work explores librarians competence in fiction literature. The primary question posted in this thesis is: What kind of fiction are librarians reading and how do they feel that they can correspond to the users expectations? The data collection is based on literature on the subject and qualitative interviews with eight librarians from different kinds of libraries. The theoretical framework builds on Pierre Bourdieus theories. The conclusion is that librarians read a lot. They read different kinds of fiction literature but more high literature. They want to have some kind of quality in their literature. This corresponds well to Bourdieus theories about the middeltaste. The librarians are aware of the users high expectations but most of them still dont consider this as a big problem. They anyway give several suggestions that would give fiction literature a more important place in the education for future librarians. Four of the librarians in this study would like to have compulsory courses in fiction literature within Library and information science. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate the reasons for public libraries to have story-time today and also the reasons for story-time at the public library historically in Sweden. Why is the phenomenon of story-time still existing at public libraries today? The study is based on a questionnaire that was sent to childrens librarians in the Västra Götaland region. The material collected in this questionnaire was put together and resulted in six different categories showing the libraries purposes and thoughts of their story-time activities. The categories were: cultural heritage/tradition, joy of reading, language and imagination, library visits, storytelling and mutual experience. The theoretical approach to story-time at the public library included theories of civic and community librarianship in local communities. The results of the study suggest that public libraries with their story-time activities are situated in the point of intersection of the state, the market and the civil society. The concept of story-time is multifaceted and the participating childrens librarians express this activity with many different names such as cultural activities or programs. The results of the study also show that the story-time activity serves as a meeting point as well as a way to developing language, a way to the library itself, a way to literature and to reading. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine how some childrens librarians in public libraries reason about Wahlströms series books. During the 1970s, there was a discussion about the series books, and the general meaning was, among other things, that the books should not be available at libraries. Therefore, we also want to study if the arguments for and against the series books presented today are any different than those presented in the 1970s. For this examination, two methods have been used. We have done qualitative interviews with nine childrens librarians, and in order to find the arguments presented in the 1970s, we have studied the literature regarding the mentioned discussion. The results from the study indicate that there is one big difference in the arguments presented in the 1970s and those presented today, namely that the librarians that we have interviewed names the popularity of the series books and that children often asks for them as a strong argument for that the books should be found at libraries. This argument we have not been able to find at all among the arguments presented in the 1970s. Apart from this, there is no difference to be mentioned in the arguments, but that there despite this is a more liberal view on the series books and also on the children today, and that these books are more accepted in the libraries now. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This thesis analyses how the European Unions institutions deal with the issue of illegal and harmful content on the Internet in key documents presented during the period 19961999. Particular attention is attached to content where the legal status is determined in relation to the user and to content that is legal, but characterized as harmful and entailing a need for special protective measures. The theoretical and methodological approach draws on discourse theory as formulated by Laclau and Mouffe. The thesis studies how the problem is represented in key documents from the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, with particular regard to the discourse on harmfulness, the child and Europe. The findings are that the overall discourse has shifted focus over time, from an emphasis on the protection of minors toward a more market-oriented discourse stressing the importance of protecting the competitiveness of the European economy. The discourse on harmfulness where meaning is fixed around sexuality, violence and ideas remains unchanged and is thus understood as a closed discourse. Some differences are, however, detected between the institutions respective discourses. The discourse on the child is more open to variations, yet by all institutions established upon notions of minors, harmfulness and parental figures. The overall discourse on Europe embraces conflicting ideas where meaning is fixed either by signs stressing the supranational function of the EU or by signs stressing cooperation between the member states. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this master thesis is to measure library service quality in two groups of libraries, newly developed and well established, and to see if there are any differences in the users perception of the dimensions in LibQUAL+. The thesis also examines the different perception of quality for the user groups: undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. Another approach is to test the Swedish translation of LibQUAL+. Different theories on service quality are presented but the main theories are from the marketing perspective. The grounding and development of LibQUAL+ is described as well as the use of the instrument in different libraries. The use of quality measures in libraries is also discussed. The results from the LibQUAL+ survey show that there are no differences between the two groups of libraries. There are however differences in the perception of quality among user groups. Faculty and graduate students perceive a higher quality in the dimensions Affect of service and Library as place than undergraduate students. Undergraduate students rate the Library as place higher than the other groups. The most important dimension for all users is Control of information. This dimension has negative Adequacy gaps for this survey. Four percent of the users experience the instrument as difficult to use. Despite this I believe that LibQUAL+ is well suited for library quality measurement and development, because of its rapid delivery of results. The instrument is also well suited for benchmarking and international comparison. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this masters thesis is to evaluate the retrieval effectiveness of three different search engines on the Internet: Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search. We have constructed 25 topics and queries with varying contents, in order to test the width of the search engines as much as possible. In every search we have evaluated the first 20 hits in each of the search engines. The measures we have used are precision and cumulated gain. Precision is based on a binary scale and cumulated gain is calculated by means of a non-binary relevance scale. The relevance judgement in this thesis is based on a four-point relevance scale, which reaches from 0-3. Our method with the two different measures gave us the opportunity to compare how varying the result can be, depending on whether we use a binary or a non-binary scale. Eventually, we analysed the results we got in different DCVs to decide where in the results page the relevant documents are to be found; early or further down the ranked list. There were no considerable differences between the three search engines but Google achieved the highest results for both precision and cumulated gain. Regarding precision Yahoo! got the lowest end result, but for cumulated gain MSN Search performed the worst. / Uppsatsnivå: D

During the changes of time, the stipulations for the existence of books and libraries also change. With technical advances come new possibilities, and the option to publish literature electronically is one of them. The purpose of this Master's thesis is to answer the question how the advantages and disadvantages of electronically published literature is described and constructed. To further deepen the analysis these questions were asked: What aims are the electronically published literature said to achieve? Why are the electronically published literature said to achieve these aims? And who are favoured/disfavoured by electronically published literature? The analyzed publications are four Swedish library related publications: Biblioteksbladet, Dik-forum, Ikoner and Nya Ciceron. The analysis is carried out using discourse analysis. In discourse analysis language and action are not separated; what is written and said affect the actions of people. The discourse is seen both as an instrument of power and control and as an instrument for the social construction of reality. The result of the analysis carried out in this thesis shows that the advantages and disadvantages are constructed in a number of varying themes. The advantages are said to be accessibility, rationalisation benefits, increased searching possibilities, and the possibility for minorities to make themselves seen. The disadvantages are described as the technical, legal and commercial dimension, the fact that it has no physical entity, and the possible threat it poses to the printed book. There are some contradictions in the material, since the accessibility and searching possibilities are described both as an advantage and a disadvantage. It is also said that students are favoured by the fact that the electronically published literature is cheaper than printed, but disfavoured by the fact that you have to pay for it. It is clear that the ongoing discussion about electronic publication of literature affects the way in which this area of publication will develop. To understand this relation we have to understand the discussion. This is also what makes the study of the discourse about electronic publication relevant in a more general context within library and information science. / Uppsatsnivå: D