The publicly funded libraries should be accessible toeveryone and according to § 4 of the Library Act libraries arelegally obliged to pay special attention to persons withdisabilities. The purpose of this thesis is to examine howpeople with disabilities are addressed in local library policydocuments. The research questions address the disabilitiesidentified in library policy documents and whether the usergroup is named as a priority group. They also address theservice offered by the libraries and operational deficiencies.42 library policy documents from municipalities in VästraGötaland were analyzed by content analysis. Buckland'stheories of different aspects of access to information havebeen used to conduct the analysis. The theoretical perspectiveof the thesis focus on ill-suited environments instead ofindividual inadequacies.The analysis showed that dyslexia and visual impairment arethe disabilities most often mentioned in the library policydocuments. Only half of the documents mentioned personswith disabilities as a priority group. The service most oftenmentioned is accessible media, of which the talking book isby far the most common. Of the deficiencies noted the vastmajority concern the need for better adapted premises.Interventions designed to facilitate retrieval of informationare seldom mentioned in the library policy documents.

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine how some university students, who are using the libraries extensively, use and experience the public and the university library and what they expect from the two different library types. I also compare their expectations with the different tasks and aims of the two library types. To answer this I have interviewed seven students at the department of history of literature at Göteborg University. I have also studied some literature and research related to this subject, for example user studies about students and libraries and the information behaviour of distance students. In addition to this I have studied the description of the aims of four public and four university libraries. In my empirical study I have used the qualitative interview as a method. To find the informants I wanted to interview I made a short questionnaire study within the students of history of literature at Göteborg University. From the answers of the questionnaires, I chose seven students who I interviewed. The results of the interviews show, among other things, that the informants use the university library entirely for study purposes. The public library is also used for other purposes, such as a meeting place or a cultural centre. The results of the study also show that in the description of aims of the public libraries the university students as a group only are mentioned in one of these documents. / Uppsatsnivå: D

In this paper we have chosen to work with both the background to the Library Act § 7a and followed the process of creating the library plan of Helsingborg City Library. We have tried to follow the process through the public text documents that are available. We start by giving a background to the library act and its additional § 7a. Then we give a recap of the emergence of the modern public libraries in Sweden during the last century until today. When the working group at the City Library in Helsingborg was working with the library plan, they had to take in count the strategic goals set up by Region Skåne, since Helsingborg is place in that area. We then present the contents in the library plan of Helsingborg City Library. The next step in this paper covers the survey where we review the answers given by the team behind the library plan of Helsingborg City Library. The next step in this paper covers the survey where we review the answers given by the team behind the library plan of Helsingborg City Library. In our thesis, we assume that the knowledge is based on the pre-understanding we gain in the subject. We chose to see this process as a hermeneutic circle and we are trying to see whether we can recover Audun’s overall points in the answers given in the survey. The thesis ends with a concluding discussion of our results and our problem, and makes proposals for future research.

The purpose of this Master`s thesis is to examine if the pur-chase of media in public libraries reflects the library's role in society. Two questions have been posed: • What view of public library's role in society is reflected in the purchase of media? • What principles guide the selection of media in public li-braries in Sweden? In order to investigate these questions, we used a question-naire that we sent out to a sample of 120 public libraries in Sweden. The analysis is based on a theory of three ap-proaches to the role of the library developed by Douglas Raber. The three approaches are the conservative approach, the populist approach and the social approach. The results of the survey show that all three approaches are represented in varying degrees and priorities are usually expressed in and guided by library plans. User demands are the central basis for the libraries purchases. Children and young people are the largest groups of users in libraries and are generally the priority of library plans. / Program: Bibliotekarie

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur några bibliotekarier ser på samarbetet mellan folkbiblioteket och skolan angående deras likvärdiga läsfrämjande arbete kring barn och unga. Metoderna vi valt att använda oss av är en enkätundersökning och att se över biblioteksplanerna för de kommuner studien berör. Vi har i enkäten valt att använda oss av både öppna och stängda frågor då vi vill undersöka bibliotekariernas perspektiv på samarbetet. Resultatet vi kommit fram till är att samarbetet ser väldigt olika ut i kommunerna men även att folkbibliotekens riktlinjer är väldigt otydliga för hur samarbetet ska se ut eller inte. Många skolor saknar skolbibliotek och använder därmed folkbiblioteket som resurs till skolan vilket även flera folkbibliotek uttrycker att de inte är deras jobb att assistera skolorna.

The fact that the public libraries have a democratic mission is considered to be of course. How is it expressed in municipal library plans that are political documents at municipal level? With this essay, the ambition is to find out how ideas about the public libraries democracy mission are expressed and how they relate to theories of democracy.

According to § 4 in the Swedish Library Act, public libraries are required to pay special attention to persons with disabilities. The purpose of this thesis is to analyse how this prioritized group is addressed in municipal library plans. The research questions focus on how the library plans interpret the Library Act paragraph, what strategies are used to accommodate the group, as well as which disabilities are represented. 30 library plans are analysed using thematic analysis, seen through a theoretical framework inspired by intersectionality with a focus on categorisation, as well as an inclusive library model. The results show a strong focus on making reading accessible through adapted forms of media and outreach services through partnerships. There is also a tendency to focus on accessibility of literature rather than retrieval of information. Beyond accessible literature the library plans also display strategies to make the library room physically accessible för persons with disabilities. The disabilities mostly represented are reading and writing disabilities and mobility impairment, while cognitive disabilities are underrepresented.

The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine which ideas about the public library that appear in a selection of municipal library plans and to examine if these ideas are unanimous. The comprehensive questions are: Which ideas about the public library appear in each municipal library plan? How do the ideas agree in the different municipal library plans? The sub questions are: Which judgements of reality appear in the different library plans concerning each municipality and its library needs? How do the municipalities define the concept of development and future demands in the municipality on the basis of the judgements of reality? Which recommendations do the judgements of reality give and how is the plan of action that is established in each library plan justified? Which fundamental views of reality, i. e. which values of the library and its role (function, task and responsibility in the municipality), do the library plans contain? The theoretical basis of the study is a model, designed by Dorte Skot-Hansen, consisting of three rationalities – humanistic, sociological and instrumental - that constitute the cultural policy. Idea analysis is the textual analytic method used in this study to classify the material and make visible the ideas in the library plans. The concept of the idea consists of the three elements: judgement of reality, recommendation of action and a fundamental view of reality. A modified version of Skot-Hansen’s model is used as a means to analyze the empirical material, which consists of six library plans. The findings of the study show that each library plan manifests all of the rationalities and that the ideas about the library that appear in the selection of library plans are practically unanimous. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine in what way the introducing of library plans in three municipalities have affected the work in library organizations. We base our study on a new institutionalist perspective, which focuses on changes in organizations from a social and interpretative perspective. By using this theoretical framework, it is possible to study how interpersonal relations affect the development in library organizations. Through qualitative interviews with ten librarians, we investigate how the establishing of library plans has influenced, and been influenced by, the library field and by the environment, i.e. politicians and the public. Further, this thesis investigates whether the library plans are articulations of traditional values and norms of the field, or if the plans have implied new ideas in the daily work. We observe that it is of decisive importance who initiates the establishing process of the plans, and that communication with politicians is crucial in the working process. The library work in the investigated municipalities is directed by institutionalized norms, values and routines, which are articulated in the library plans. Our study shows that this articulation works in two different ways. In one aspect it reinforces the institutionalization and has a legitimizing function. In another aspect, it has a limiting impact on the library’s ability to environmental adaptation and organizational change of a revolutionary nature. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This Master thesis focuses on change conditions and change ambitions in Swedish public libraries. I have chosen to focus on three libraries that participated in a much-debated developmental project sponsored by the Swedish Arts Council almost twenty years ago. The aim of the project was to enhance service-quality, increase user-influence over media acquisition and library routines, and to redefine the concept of quality in the library context. I have made comparisons of the conditions and change ambitions between the project period 1991-1994 and present day 2009. To do this I have analyzed the evaluations of the above-mentioned project and the developmental plans that every municipality in Sweden is required to write according the library-law of 2004. I have also taken into account the major changes in information technology, new legislation of relevance to Swedish libraries and restrictions put upon libraries as a consequence of the decline in the public economy. I have related the change ambitions during the two periods studied to the discourse typology developed by Hedemark, Hedman and Sundin (2005). My main finding is that the focus of the libraries during the project time was on an information management discourse. This is also the case in present day but is now supplemented by an information technology discourse. The alleged concept of quality is no longer based of traditional values but on user demands. To some extent and in relation to minority groups and parents of small children one can still see remains of a general education discourse. / Program: Bibliotekarie