The aim of this thesis is to study the effects of self-service on professional qualifications of library assistants in three public libraries in Sweden. The research questions are: - How do the library assistants experience that their professional qualifications have changed since self-service was introduced at the library? - Does the view on library assistants’ professional qualifications and future differ between library managers and library assistants? - Does the view on library assistants’ professional qualifications and future differ between the three different libraries? The method used is qualitative interviews with six library assistants and three head of libraries from three different public libraries. The theoretical framework for this study is constructed by theoretical ideas about professional qualifications and technology's impact on professionalism. The results indicate that the cognitive qualifications of library assistants have increased and social qualifications both increased and decreased. The professional roles between librarians and library assistants are tending to merge. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The theme of this essay is the principle of free access to the Swedish Public Libraries, and its aim is to fmd out the opinion of adult visitors of such libraries as regards the introduction of fees on the borrowing of books, already existing fees such as reservation fees, charges for interlibrary loans and charges for the late return of books.The main part of our survey comprises questionnaires that were handed out to 100 visitors at the Norrkoping City Library and 100 visitors at the Eskilstuna City and Provincial Library. In order to illustrate the fee problem from another angle, interviews with staff people from the two libraries were carried out A large part of the essay consists of material aiming to give a general picture of the subject, e.g. how the "free of charge principle" is tied to the Swedish library system, what arguments have been presented to maintain or reverse this principle, and a comparison of the relative situation in other countries. As the conception of popular education is so basic for the "free of charge principle", we also account for the idea of popular education.The result of our questionnaire shows, among other things, that 60,9% cannot consider paying for any of the free services offer by the libraries today, 21,3% answered that they could possibly consider paying for some of the services and 17,8% answered that they didn't know. 76% would rather pay for a library card than stop borrowing books altogether.

The new Library Act came in force in January 2014, external changes such as globalization and information technologies had changes the way libraries work and the new law aimed to reflect this. The aim of this study is to examine ideas surrounding the mission of the public library as it appears in the referral statements that three state agencies and three interest organizations gave to the ministry publications series Ds 2012:13. The questions this thesis examines are: what ideas can be discerned in the respond-ents' opinion regarding public library's mission? How is the con-sultation bodies’ way of looking at public library's mission to-wards the government's approach? In this thesis the empirical ma-terial has been analyzed using a theoretical model called The four spaces – a new model for the public library designed by Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen, Henrik Jochumsen and Dorte Skot-Hansen. The model consists of four different goals and four differ-ent spaces and can be used as a basis for discussions about the public libraries role in society. The findings show that the state agencies and the interest organizations view of the mission of the public library is that of a knowledge intermediaries and a conveyer of information, of promoting reading and democratic views and having children and adolescents as a focus group. In regards to the comparison between the government’s ways of looking at the mis-sion, I found only a few differences. The respondent’s wanted to widen the mission compared to the governments view. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The focus of this thesis is to examine posts on library’s Facebook pages and to investigate possible connections between posts and user response. The study examines posts published from thirty different libraries Facebook pages over a two week period to examine if any correlation between different subjects or types of posts affects the degree and type of response from the users.The findings show that photos stand for the majority of the published post concerning its type and that activities at the library was the most common subject of posts. After using eta as measure of association a tenuous connection between degree of response and the posts subject and between the degree of response and the type of post was found. The standard deviation, however, was high in the majority of the variables used. The data also showed that posts containing videos had a very high mean of user response as did the subject culture news, although either of them constituted a sufficiently large part of the examined material in order to prove a connection. Previous research also supports the connection between posting of multimedia like videos and the engagement from the users. / 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 bachelor’s thesis is to investigate how the activities of the public library are portrayed by the Swedish press. It poses the following questions: What kinds of public library activities are portrayed in the Swedish press? What image does this depiction purvey to the general public about the societal role of public libraries?A model of four library spaces developed by Skot-Hansen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen, and Jochumsen is used as the theoretical framework for this study. Qualitative content analysis is applied to 173 Swedish newspaper articles that describe public library activities.The analysis reveals that articles about many kinds of public library activities get published in the Swedish press, but that some activities occur more frequently than others. Articles depicting the public library as a place of literature, a place for lectures, and as a place where you can spend your free time are common, whereas articles depicting the library as a place for seeking information are rare.The essay concludes that if the public libraries want the press to give an accurate account of the roles of the modern public library, they need to make sure that more articles are published which highlight the library’s role not only as a tool for entertaining people, but also for empowering them. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this thesis is to examine the Swedish public libraries acquisition processes when it comes to fiction for adults. The thesis focus on how the librarians responsible for acquiring view literary quality when they manage their collections and how their views coincide with that of the user’s explicit wishes. Furthermore this thesis looks at the librarians reading habits and how they coincide with that of their perceived users.The study uses literature pedagogic perspective theory to see how the librarians look at fiction and what they value in it. In order to get answers six librarians have been interviewed in this study that uses a qualitative approach to getting answers. None of the interviewed librarians’ expressed that they, or the public library where they are active have an expressed criteria when it comes to quality it’s rather the opposite. They all try to manage between satisfying the user’s requests and maintaining a balance of different genres in their collections.The interviewed librarians all feel that it is more important to them that their users read literature at all rather then what they read. Several of the interviewed librarians mean that if they keep supplying the users with what they ask for that in itself increases the possibilities of the librarian to steer them towards more advanced literature in the future. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this essay is to give a picture of the extension work at Partille Public Library, asit is today, as well as to investigate if there is a need to reconsider the way of working at thelibrary.Qualitative interviews have been made with the extensive librarians and certain local governmentpoliticians, borrowers and personnel at hospitals as well as other institutions.The extension work at Partille Public Library corresponds quite well to the intentions whichare stated for the work in certain important investigations made by the Government. Theborrowers and the personnel are quite satisfied with the work and are only pointing out a fewviews on changes. The politicians mean that the aim of the extension work of the library ison one hand to give service to certain more or less neglected groups and on the other handto reach new book readers.

Publication of science fiction has a tradition in Sweden. Adult-fantasy does not. In recentyears, the 1980's, Swedish publishers have realised how profitable fantasy is. Of the totalpublication of the two genres between 1989 and 1994, 54% was science fiction and 46%was fantasy. The reason for this even balance is that fantasy-books get reprinted more frequentlythan science fiction-books. However, there are more science fiction-titles published thanfantasy-titles.The four public libraries that I have examined have similar methods of acquiring books. Theyhave all, just about, acquired the same titles of fantasy while the science fiction acquired differsto a large degree. The four libraries • acquisitions are similar to those of the libraries connectedto Bibliotekstjänst's database BURK. The differences between the four libraries lie in thenumber of science fiction and fantasy-books and the distribution of different languages thebooks were originally published in.

This thesis is an attempt to study computer games and playful computer programs for childrenand youth at Swedish public libraries. The main method used, is qualitative interviews.The main reason the libraries in the study offer computer games and playful computer programsto their users, is that every member of the society shall have opportunity to use newtechnology such as computers and computer programs. The users of this media are for themost part boys. The librarians in our study wish to have pedagogical games and programswithout violent themes at their libraries. Lending computer games and computer programs isnot of any priority for the libraries.