The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to perform a user oriented evaluation of the International Library’s website. The questions posed in this study are; for what purpose do the users in this study turn to the International Library’s website; what does the users information searching process consist of when visiting the site; how does navigation, layout and content effect the users satisfaction with the website; do the users in this study consider that the International Library’s website can be improved and if so, how? The study was performed with a user oriented approach where six qualitative interviews with librarians who use the website were conducted. These interviews were analysed using Brenda Dervin’s Sense making-theory and Leclercq’s theory about user satisfaction. The results show that functions that the librarians have used regularly on the website are easily found but the site lack in intuitiveness. The users trust the content on the website and this effects their satisfaction in a positive way because it makes the information useful. The suggestions of improvement of the website concerned easier access to the catalog and a separate entrance for librarians and other users. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The underlying purpose of this study is to see whether a library focused solely on providing literature in other languages than Swedish serves as a unifying, integrating force, or as an agent for division and exclusion. The study focuses on the International Library in Stockholm. The authors have created a profile of the visitors of the selected library, concerning their characteristics, their library habits and their perceptions of the International library. This profile has then been compared with the staff’s perception of the visitors as a group. To assemble data in order to create a profile of the visitors, a survey has been conducted looking into factors such as age, language, native country, educational level, reasons for coming to the library and attitudes towards the library. A small group of the staff, five persons, have been interviewed to inquire about their attitudes towards and perceptions of the visitors, as well as attitudes towards issues such as multilingualism, and their estimation of the importance of and right to literature in ones mother tongue. The authors found that the visitors are a very heterogeneous group of people, with various backgrounds and language skills. A larger number than expected were Swedish speaking and ethnic Swedes. The staff’s impression of the visitors was largely in accordance with our findings. The staff expressed a strong belief in the idea that access to literature in one’s mother tongue can actually be helpful when one is trying to settle in a new country. Although other libraries may be reluctant to handle literature in foreign languages, the staff of the International Library feels that their expertise helps to ensure the inhabitants of the greater Stockholm area good quality and access to literature in many languages. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This study aims to examine how study participants at the International Library in Sweden work with multilingual literature. Interviews with members of the staff were performed by using the critical incident technique. Qualitative content analysis was used to find themes and categories in the interviews. The following research questions are used in this study: According to the informants, what governs their work, how is it organized and who, according to them, are the library’s users? How do the informants work with multilingual media, what challenges do the informants encounter and how do they work with these challenges? The theoretical framework used to analyze the results originates from models of collection development, theories of strategies in organizations and theoretical frameworks of learning in organizations. The results of the study show that the informants face several challenges in the process of working with multilingual media. The study also presents different strategies used by the informants to meet these challenges. The results suggest that the International library in Sweden is an organization characterized by adhocracy and learning with a strong occurrence of emergent strategies. Many times the informants must make their way up as they go along. The results suggest that working with multilingual collection building demands experience and adaptation to new situations and highlight the importance of language skills and support between colleagues