In this paper we will be looking at children’s reading habits, their attitudes towards reading, and whether or not the presence of digital technology such as television or computers have any effect on said reading habits. The material of the study will be collected via group interviews with students at age nine to ten at two different schools in neighbouring towns in the south of Sweden. The parents of the students have all been informed of the study, and approved of their children taking part of it. The purpose of interviewing the students directly, and not to their parents or teachers, is that the chance of them giving relevant and thoughtful answers increase of they are treated as individuals with thoughts and opinions of their own. The study shows that most of the students read with the purpose of school assignments and while most of them don’t mind reading, not many do it for pleasure if there are possibilities of other activities offered instead. Some of these other activities do involve screen time, but many also enjoy being active and spending time with their friends and families.

The aim with this master’s thesis is to examine the information practices and information literacies among social workers in the field of the social services and in the work with child welfare investigations. This is in this study related to their ambition to fulfill the requirements of an evidence-based practice. On a theoretical level, the study is based on three theories grounded in the idea of situated learning and of human activities based in a social context. These are the sociocultural theory, the theory of communities of practices and the theory of information practices. On a methodological level the survey is carried out, and the empirical material is extracted, by using semi-structured interviews with five social workers in two different social offices. The result of the analysis shows that the social workers see the need of, search, share, evaluate and use several sources of information. They include information from the social workers own working experience and expertise, information from the clients and their social network, colleagues and professionals in institutions and agencies external to the social offices. The survey also shows that scientific research information is searched, used and evaluated by the social workers to a low degree. This is connected to the information barriers found in the empirical material, including lack of time and lack of access to digital databases. The main conclusion is that the social workers see the need of scientific research and the academic information literacy related to this, and that the information barriers at the same time force them to evolve an information literacy fitted to the practical work situation. For an evidence-based practice, the social workers see the need to incorporate more of the academic information literacy and practices with the information literacy and practices of the workplace. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.