This essay is investigating what type of sources we trust, depending on how the information in these sources is created and provided. To exemplify, the sources Wikipedia and Nationalencyklopedin (the Swedish National Encyclopedia) were used, each one representing different approaches. The first is a representation of the collective intelligence, where anyone can contribute with their knowledge to the public – freedom under responsibility. The latter represents peer-reviewed knowledge, desirable enough to have people paying for it– true and unaffected.Based on theories of source criticism, collective intelligence, expertise and the different generations of digital natives and digital immigrants, two focus groups were conducted and analysed. A group of upper secondary school students and a group of retirees were presented with encoded texts from both encyclopedias, which they analysed critically from their opinion on reliability and objectivity. Their reasoning shows a well demonstrated awareness of the need of a critical reasoning and information literacy when dealing with different sources. But the question remained, particularly in regards to the students, if they do after all practice these skills in their information retrieval. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The main purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine how Swedish upper secondary school librarians and related staff relate to the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. The research is placed in the all-embracing context of information literacy and source criticism on the Internet. The study was carried out in the form of qualitative interviews and based on two theoretical bases: firstly, the concept of cognitive authority stipulated by Patrick Wilson, and secondly the idea that Wikipedia has a draw towards late modern epistemological assumptions. The latter theory was also associated with the perceptions of knowledge among the library staff interviewed. According to the results, there seems to be a connection between a) the library staff’s perceptions of knowledge, b) the library staff’s actual knowing about Wikipedia, c) the library staff’s attitudes toward Wikipedia and d) the teaching performed by the library staff about Wikipedia. The results also suggest the cognitive authority of the traditional encyclopaedia to be strong, especially among those within the library staff not very familiar with Wikipedia. Those positive to Wikipedia possibly represent perceptions of knowledge with a draw towards the late modern. Finally, possible solutions regarding the improvement of information literacy and of Wikipedia usage among the upper secondary school pupils are discussed.

KvinnSam is stated to have had an important role in laying the foundation of academic gender studies. The initial organization was founded relatively long before the subject entered the academic arena, which places the knowledge organization of the field prior to the authoritative demand for it. This study aims to analyze events, initiated by the library, significant to the academic establishment of gender research from a discursive perspective. By utilizing the concepts of documentality and legitimacy, and cognitive authority the analysis answers the question of what active function and significance the library has had in establishing the academic field of gender studies. The empirical material is gathered from the libraries own archives on historical women associations, published accounts of librarians engaged in the organization and articles and debate pieces published in media. The historical method used results in no produced material but a controlled selection based on the theoretical approach and the placement of the accounts in a contemporary context. The analysis results in a review of both the official and informal constitutive forms the library has been situated in and its effects on legitimacy. It also covers the relations to the academic sphere as cognitive authority and the process of making an uninstitutionalised subject field considered veracious science. The most valuable conclusions are the library’s function to describe and value knowledge and thereby declare their scientific relevance, as well as the discursive significance of stating the field as a possible research domain by creating an academic infrastructure for it.

Online social networks are a natural part of the lives of today’s western youth. Media and information literacy is a central part of research in Library and Information science and until now there has always been more focus on these subjects in a learning context rather than in an every day life context. The aim of this study is to further examine how adolescent boys value and trust the information they receive via Twitter in their personal lives, and how this effects their view of their environment. The study was done with a qualitative method, where we conducted interviews with six boys who were all born in 1997. The results showed that they knew how to react critically to information on Twitter. Although none of the participants valued information on Twitter too seriously, they did feel that it kept them more updated than if they had not been using the social network.

Todays youth faces difficulties when navigating on the World Wide Web where they constantly face an infinite amount of information. Therefore it has never been as important to equip the adults of tomorrow with the information literacy skills they need to be able to navigate and successfully evaluate the information.This study makes the attempt to chart the evaluation strategies amongst upper secondary highschool students by sending out a web-based survey consisting of 21 questions regarding their tendencies of searching and evaluating relevance and credibility of information. The result indicates that students efficiently find the information they are looking for on the Internet, but that the methods of evaluation needs further development. Additionally, the students use the qualities of presented information as the caret of the relevance of information, and the majority evaluate the relevance prior to the credibility of the information they face.The majority of the students only aspect of evaluating the credibility is to confirm it with a second source, without taking into account any underlaying purposes if the information or whether there is any bias between the two sources. This concludes that students needs to work more consciously with evaluation strategies to raise their awareness of how they evaluate information. This can be made by, in school context, make them account for how they do so, to make the analytical method of evaluating credibility a part of their metacognitive information literacy skill.

Video games are common hobbies today, and as such they have been studied within the field of LIS. However, video gaming is a wide subject, and therefore there still exist areas that have not yet been properly researched. This bachelor thesis investigates the ways video game players experience the use of external and internal information and the effect it has on their gameplay experiences. The aim of this study is to determine players’ motivations behind searching for information in relation to gaming and the factors they consider when doing so. Metagaming, which is a commonly used term when it comes to describing what is popular and considered optimal within gaming communities, is explored within the thesis. The theoretical framework that is being adopted for this study and which is being used to interpret the empirical data is Information Practices, Cognitive Authority and McKenzie’s Information Practices model, with related terms. This study is qualitative in nature, and the method that is being used is semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that the kinds of information sources and media types that are used by the players are varied. Furthermore the type of game that is being played has a significant impact on the ways in which the players view external and internal information seeking. Metagaming is shown to be a strong influence on how information is searched for in relation to online games. The impact of communally negotiated norms is clear and is clarified within the thesis.