With an increased empowerment of the users, and a dependence on outside critics, one wonders what kind of role the librarians have in a context where qualitative literature is discussed. The aim of this study is to examine the relationship between librarians private and professional views on qualitative fiction, in order to be able to discuss their role as quality intermediaries in a user oriented context.The method used, is the qualitative, semistructured interview. This author interviewed seven librarians from three different libraries in Sweden. The theoretical emphasis partly relies on the ten words of qualitative value that Inger Elam and Bengt Brülde discusses in their respective texts, partly on David Garvins quality assessment theory, which defines several quality categories divided between an absolute and a relative quality view.Through the comparison between the private and the professional quality view, examined with the two theoretical approaches, the analysis of the interview material shows that there lies a complexity in the librarians professional role. On the one hand, they are dependent of both the users and the critics judgements about the qualitative aspect in the work with purchasing new literature to the library. Their role is in that point of view a passive one. On the other hand, the informants have other methods to gain control over the quality assessments, which allows them to be more involved in relation to the users and the critics. Therefore, the role of the librarians is a complex one when studied from this perspective. / Program: Bibliotekarie

In this paper we describe UX and design thinking as a method for library development, and we describe the library as a democratic arena and its democratic mission. These ideas and methods are becoming more of common use among libraries. Since public libraries have a democratic mission we find it relevant to examine what view is presented within these new methods of libraries, users and democracy. Design thinking and UX have developed within the private sector, and since libraries in Sweden are financed by the public sector conflicts may arise between the two. The purpose of this paper is to perform an ideology analysis of the document Design thinking for libraries – Toolkit (the Swedish version). This with the purpose to shed light on these aspects, and to find out how they relate to Paulo Freire’s and Henry Giroux’s theories of critical pedagogy and radical democracy with the concepts empowerment and marginalisation. From the analysis, an ideological view emerges that promotes neoliberal values, instead of a more radical democratic view that we would expect to find since the Toolkit is created as a method for library development. Users appear as providers of information, which is then used as a design-tool for this development. Compared to Freire and Giroux, this is not equal to empowerment since focus is not on strengthening users. In addition to this, we have found that problems are not allowed to exist in the Toolkit since they are invariably supposed to be seen as opportunities instead, which gives the impression that marginalisation is a person’s own fault. Furthermore, the Toolkit emphasises the librarian instead of the user, and also requires that the practitioner is open minded, positive and trusts the process. In other words, there is not much room for reflection or critical thinking, either among staff or users, hence, democracy is not promoted.

The aim of this master's thesis is to study public libraries' marketing on the social media site Twitter. To achieve this goal, the Twitter accounts of four Swedish public libraries were studied for several months. The four libraries that were studied consist of Stockholm library, Lidingö library, Malmö library, and Gothenburg library. The marketing theory that inspired me is called the seven Ps of marketing, which is a marketing mix that is specifically developed for service industries. My main sources in the application of the theory have been the works of Ned Potter and Eileen Elliott de Sáez, which combine marketing with the field of library and information science. Netnography, a qualitative method that studies online communities, has been applied as methodology. The methods that have been used consist of online observations and e-mail interviews. It was seen that the libraries use Twitter as a marketing tool to attain more users and to strengthen their ties with the existing users. Through Twitter, libraries promote their products to users. The communication between the library and its users becomes an important factor in marketing the library on Twitter. It was observed that users play an active role in marketing the library on Twitter. Users not only shape the marketing of the library through their responses but they also contribute to the marketing of the library by retweeting libraries' tweets or "mentioning" the libraries on Twitter. This is a two years master's thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies. / Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera folkbibliotekens marknadsföring på det sociala mediet Twitter. För att uppnå detta mål, har aktiviteterna på fyra specifika folkbiblioteks Twitterkonton studerades i drygt fyra månader. De fyra folkbiblioteken vars Twitterkonton undersöktes består av Stockholms stadsbibliotek, Lidingö stadsbibliotek och Malmö stadsbibliotek samt Stadsbiblioteket Göteborg. Den marknadsföringsteori som inspirerade mig kallas för de sju P:na, vilket är en marknadsmix som är speciellt utvecklad för tjänstebranscher. Mina huvudsakliga källor i tillämpningen av teorin har varit verk av Ned Potter och Eileen Elliott de Sáez som kombinerar marknadsföring med biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap. Netnografi, en kvalitativ metod som studerar samhället på Internet, applicerades som metodik. Online-observationer och e-post-intervjuer har även utförts som en del av analysmetoden. Resultaten visar att biblioteken använder Twitter som ett marknadsföringsverktyg för att nå fler användare, göra reklam för sina produkter och för att stärka sina band med de befintliga användarna. Kommunikationen mellan biblioteken och dess användare blir en viktig faktor i marknadsföringen av biblioteket på Twitter. Användarna spelar en viktig roll, eftersom de både formar marknadsföringen av biblioteket genom sin respons och bidrar till ökad reklam för biblioteket genom att retweeta deras tweets eller nämna biblioteken i sina egna tweets. Detta är en tvåårig masteruppsats inom programmet Arkivvetenskap, Biblioteks- och informationsvetenskap samt Musei- och kulturvetenskap.

In recent years it has been discussed in the media that library users often request help and support from librarians regarding for example digital tasks and services that relate to government agencies and commercial companies. The aim of this study is to contribute with knowledge of public librarians' views regarding their mission and approaches to help and support to library users in the library. The study focuses on all types of help and support that library users request in addition to the library's traditional services (which are here understood as services clearly related to the library collection, e.g. reference work and user instruction). In order to examine this matter eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with public librarians at libraries in the municipality of Gothenburg. The transcripts from the interviews were then analyzed using qualitative content analysis guided and structured by a practice theoretical framework. In accordance with the practice theoretical framework, help and support to library users is considered as a practice. The result show that the library's mission in terms of help and support to library users can be seen both as narrow, primarily comprising reference work and as wide including all kinds of information, and that the participants help and support library users in different ways and with a wide range of questions and matters, within the wide description of the mission.

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.

This thesis is about library users with dyslexia and their use of available media. Dyslexia is a disability that involves difficulties in reading and writing. To be able to read is important in this technical society for both education and work. Many adults with dyslexia often tend to avoid reading, which affect other areas in their life. Many adults do not use library resources in order to improve their reading and they might not know what the library has to offer, while young users often get the help they need through school and libraries. The focus will be on two groups of users, adults and younger users, as teenagers. This study analyses the difference between how experiences from libraries and what they can provide may differ from one group to the other and what are the differences in access to adequate resources with respect to the user’s age. The purpose of this thesis is to see how available media as talking books make persons with dyslexia to read more and better. The thesis aim is to display how they can use the libraries more and how the library can help them improve their reading and to compare the differences between teenagers and adults’ users. The study will use documents from different countries to look upon differences between countries. The focus will be on the user’s perspective. Their experience of libraries and available media, how libraries can evolve and how marketing of libraries can be possible.

This bachelor thesis examines the perceptions and attitudes that library users and non-users have with public library marketing. The study aims to understand the relationship the library users and non-users have with public library marketing and what they think the public library should promote. It also discusses the important role the public library plays in a changing society, partly in terms of the social capital it helps to build and the social and cultural participation it helps to strengthen among its users. This study is based on an online survey and the results have been analyzed with relationship marketing, action organization and SWOT-analysis. The findings show that the library users and non-users are generally positive towards the public library marketing. However both groups indicate that the public library needs to innovate its marketing to make it feel modern and reach out through the channels that the users and non-users request.

<p>The aim of this study is to examine how work at music departments in public libraries has changed with time. To analyze this, the role of music libraries as well as music library users, selection, holdings, acquisition and technological development have been examined. The examined data consists of qualitative interviews with music librarians and library assistants at public libraries in Sweden. To get a time perspective, handbooks and articles about music departments in libraries have also been analyzed.</p><p>This study emanates from Sanna Talja’s discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland. In her study of Finnish music libraries she has found three discourses that give the library different roles in society. The first discourse, <em>The General Education Repertoire</em>, states that the role of the music library is to educate the citizens by supplying a broad record collection with “classics” from all kinds of genres. The second discourse, <em>The Alternative Repertoire</em>,<em> </em>states that the role of the library is to be an alternative to commercial music and the record industry by providing alternative music, that can’t be found everywhere. The third discourse, <em>The Demand Repertoire</em>, states that the role of the library is to satisfy the library users’ needs and thus adapt the collection and acquisitions to the local demand.</p><p>The study shows that all three discourses are present at the public libraries examined in this master’s thesis. My interviewees state that they want to offer a broad collection with all genres represented but they find it also important to provide alternative music that is difficult to find elsewhere. At the same time, a demand repertoire, where the collection is more adapted to users’ wishes and needs, gets more common and librarians have a less critical attitude towards certain genres that were formerly banned at public libraries.</p><p>The study also shows that work at public libraries has changed a lot with time. The music departments started with only listening service, began later to loan their music collections to the users and now even provide music files that can be downloaded and played on mp3-players. Loan figures of phonograms remain high, but have started to drop, which can partly be due to downloading and the fact that the number of young music library users, such as adolescents, has gone down. The technological development has also changed work at the music library, among other things information research, acquisition and selection. Even though technological development has changed the work and tasks at music libraries, the role of the librarian is still quite the same. An important task still is to search for and provide information even though the strategies and facilities are different.</p>

The aim of this study is to examine how work at music departments in public libraries has changed with time. To analyze this, the role of music libraries as well as music library users, selection, holdings, acquisition and technological development have been examined. The examined data consists of qualitative interviews with music librarians and library assistants at public libraries in Sweden. To get a time perspective, handbooks and articles about music departments in libraries have also been analyzed. This study emanates from Sanna Talja’s discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland. In her study of Finnish music libraries she has found three discourses that give the library different roles in society. The first discourse, The General Education Repertoire, states that the role of the music library is to educate the citizens by supplying a broad record collection with “classics” from all kinds of genres. The second discourse, The Alternative Repertoire, states that the role of the library is to be an alternative to commercial music and the record industry by providing alternative music, that can’t be found everywhere. The third discourse, The Demand Repertoire, states that the role of the library is to satisfy the library users’ needs and thus adapt the collection and acquisitions to the local demand. The study shows that all three discourses are present at the public libraries examined in this master’s thesis. My interviewees state that they want to offer a broad collection with all genres represented but they find it also important to provide alternative music that is difficult to find elsewhere. At the same time, a demand repertoire, where the collection is more adapted to users’ wishes and needs, gets more common and librarians have a less critical attitude towards certain genres that were formerly banned at public libraries. The study also shows that work at public libraries has changed a lot with time. The music departments started with only listening service, began later to loan their music collections to the users and now even provide music files that can be downloaded and played on mp3-players. Loan figures of phonograms remain high, but have started to drop, which can partly be due to downloading and the fact that the number of young music library users, such as adolescents, has gone down. The technological development has also changed work at the music library, among other things information research, acquisition and selection. Even though technological development has changed the work and tasks at music libraries, the role of the librarian is still quite the same. An important task still is to search for and provide information even though the strategies and facilities are different.

The aim of this study is to examine the significance of having a music department at the public library in Enköping, and how the organization of the phonograms is handled. The different areas examined are the reason of the reintroduction of a music department, its budget, its users, the work with selection, the marketing, statistical data concerning loans, the work with classification, indexing, and organization of the phonograms and the future of the music department. The empirical material consists of qualitative interviews with staff connected to the music department at the public library in Enköping. For the theoretical frame, Sanna Taljas discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland is used. Talja presents three discourses which all show different views on what kind of material a music library should contain. The first discourse, The General Education Repertoire, advocates that the music library should supply a collection that could serve as educational and represent the history of music and its different genres. The second discourse, The Alternative Repertoire, advocates that the music library should serve as an alternative to the sources of commercial music and offer material with a more alternative character. The third discourse, The Demand Repertoire, advocates that the music library should build its collection based on the users demands and needs. The study shows that all three of the discourses are present when material for the collection is selected, even though The General Education Repertoire and The Demand Repertoire are the two most conspicuous. The study also shows that a music department was reintroduced in the library stock based on things like an interest in the art form as such in the library management. The department has had a positive impact on the library's entire statistics, even though loan figures of phonograms have showed a negative trend since the opening. The figures still remain fairly high so the music department is believed to have a future, even though its future also appears uncertain. When classifying phonograms, judgements made by other libraries regarding the work in question, and different sources on the Internet are helpful tools in the process before making a final decision. The organization of the phonograms on the shelves do not in detail follow their classification. Instead they are organized in more rough divisions in order to make the music department more user-friendly.