While almost 23 percent of the students in the Swedish upper secondary school are foreigners, only a fraction of the school libraries’ collections consists of literature written in other languages than Swedish or English. This study examines how five school librarians experience the task of working with literature composed in foreign languages in the multicultural and multilingual school of today. The results of the qualitative interviews are analyzed in relation to the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries are working by, and also in relation to the theoretical framework of sociocultural theory and the theories on second language acquisition developed by linguist Jim Cummins. The study shows that while multilingualism is discussed as an important matter in the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries work by, the librarians in this study largely view the question of foreign literature as peripheral. Most part of the librarians connects first language reading to leisure-time activities rather than curricular activities, and stresses that the Swedish language should be prioritized in Swedish schools. The paper is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

Att påvisa vad skolbibliotekarier bidrar med är ett mål som finns inom biblioteksforskning. Idag finns det ingen fråga om att skolbibliotekarier har en del i elevers utveckling tack vare flertal studier som påvisar hur bemanning, arbetstimmar och utbildad personal har en positiv inverkan på elevresultat. Men att peka ut att utbildade skolbibliotekarier är en del av ökad måluppfyllelse och att peka ut vad utbildade skolbibliotekarier faktiskt kan och gör för att öka måluppfyllelse är två olika forskningsingångar. Det är i det sistnämnda området som den här uppsatsen kliver in. Syftet har varit att undersöka vilka kompetenser som utbildade skolbibliotekarier anser att de besitter och som urval har sju stycken gymnasiebibliotekarier intervjuats. Som det uppdagas är informationskompetens, källkritik, användarkunskaper samt viss dokumenthantering, delar som specifikt kopplas till en skolbibliotekaries utbildningsbakgrund. På grund av den korrelationen kan slutsatser tas om att de kompetenserna är en del av pusslet som ligger bakom utbildade skolbibliotekaries bidrag i måluppfyllelse. / To state what school librarians contribute within school systems is one objective within library science. As of today, there is no doubt that school librarians are a part of students’ development due to several studies which show that staffing, work hours and qualified staff has a positive influence over student achievement. But to present how educated school librarians are a part of student achievement and to present what educated school librarians actually know and do to achieve higher student scores are two separate research themes. It is in the latter area this paper commences. The aim has been to study which competencies educated school librarians themselves think they possess and as sampling seven upper secondary school librarians were interviewed. As the results show information literacy, critical thinking, user knowledge and specific record management, are competencies which are thought to originate in the school librarians’ educational background. Due to this correlation conclusions can be made to say that these competencies are a part of the puzzle that explains why educated school librarians have an impact on student achievement.

Introduction. The concept of emotional labour can be described as the strategies used to express emotions required of a job, and the strategies used to suppress those emotions that are inappropriate in the workplace. This paper aims to examine the emotional labour of Swedish high school librarians. Method. For this study, six high school librarians were interviewed about emotional situations in the workplace and how they handle their emotions. The interview transcripts were analysed thematically, using QDA Miner Lite software. Analysis and results. Emotional labour theories and role theory were used to understand the librarians' emotional labour. The findings show that emotional labour occurs in interactions with students, teachers/colleagues and managers. Situations that require emotional labour include students that make a racket in the library, students in need of support in personal matters and challenges of instructional work. However, the most prominent theme concerns teachers/colleagues and managers who do not have accurate knowledge of the librarians' competencies. The librararians use deep and surface acting strategies to handle their emotions, as well as situation modification, situation selection and venting. These strategies are used both during interaction and before/after (outside of) situations. Conclusion. Interactions with students are not the primary cause of the librarians' emotional labour. Rather, the main reason for emotional labour is managers' and colleagues' limited knowledge of school library work and the competencies of school librarians. One effect of this limited knowledge is that the librarians do not always get the opportunity to practice their competence. Another effect is the risk that the students do not get equal access to the librarys' and the librarians' services – in turn, the risk of this inequality affects the librarians' emotional health negatively. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

This thesis examines how school libraries and academic libraries work with certain aspects of academic literacy in order to prepare pupils for higher education. The starting point of the thesis is the proposal for a new national strategy for Swedish libraries, published in March 2019, where educational libraries are presented as a coherent chain. The aim with the thesis is to find out whether there is a gap between upper secondary school libraries and academic libraries, in how they work with academic preparation. The purpose is to map the work already executed in the area and how the libraries’ mission has been stated. Data is collected in two web surveys: one sent out to staff at upper secondary school libraries and one to staff at academic libraries. The respondents answered questions about their current work and how the mission is perceived. The scientific method used is influenced by on-going evaluation. To define preparation areas, theory about academic literacy is applied.   To define the mission of educational libraries related laws, documents and other relevant information has been analysed. Responses from  the surveys help answering questions about executed work, perception of mission and experiences of a possible knowledge gap.   In documents related to statements of the libraries’ mission it is clear that school libraries play a part in helping schools reach common goals such as academic preparation. Academic libraries have less of pedagogical missions stated for them but out of tradition both libraries already work pedagogically with academic literacy. A gap could be surmised when staff at the school libraries say they work with a specific area of literacy and staff at academic libraries perceive new students to have insufficient knowledge in the same area. The thesis concludes with suggestions to improve the libraries’ work with college preparation. On a national and municipal level there is a need for a more clearly defined mission to assure equivalence for all pupils. Schools are suggested to develop business plans on their own to adapt the national and municipal mission statements to local conditions. Academic libraries are suggested to start cooperating with upper secondary schools. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

The purpose of this thesis is to elucidate which arguments and discourses can be discovered in the state investigation SOU 2021:3 Skolbibliotek för bildning och utbildning. By presenting these arguments and discourses I intend to accentuate the expectations surrounding the school library and its personnel. Another aim with my thesis is to emphasise the situation surrounding the school library and how it can be affected by the propositions in the state investigation.       The theoretical and methodological starting points are discourse analysis and argument analysis. The discourse analysis stems from Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe with contributions from Åse Hedemark. In the empirical analysis I present five themes regarding the school library, based on findings in the material. Here I also present concepts and arguments regarding the school library, which in turn formulate the discourses. In the last discussion of the thesis, I present and analyze the discourses. There are four discourses I find representative of the preconditions of school libraries and school librarians, along with their current situation. The discourses are about; The enthusiast, the power and the pastorale, the leadership, and the invisibility and frustration. The discourse analytical discussion reflects on how there are predominating discourses that frame the reality of the school library. However, the state investigation presents dictums which can become new discourses. They can formulate the default discourses surrounding the definitions of the school library; here the difficulty lies in transforming theory to actuality. This thesis explores the arguments, discourses and virtual situation affecting the school library and its personnel. It presents reflections on how the propositions of the state investigation can influence working life of the school librarian, as well as the roles and features of the school library. This is a two-year master’s thesis in Library and information science.

Thus far the research on how schools have managed the sudden transition to distance education due to the COVID-19 pandemic has mainly focused on the experiences of teachers, and the voices of school librarians have gone unexplored. This study aims to explore the transition to distance education from the perspectives of secondary school librarians in Sweden. The study focuses on how this transition affected school librarians’ working practices and the factors that impacted their abilities to rebuild their usual activities and services in new formats. This study uses an infrastructural perspective to analyse the school library as a part of the wider school infrastructure, and considers the enforced transition to distance education as a kind of infrastructural ‘breakdown’. School libraries are treated as multifaceted infrastructures with material, structural and relational/cultural factors which all may contribute to their success. Through a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 14 librarians at 12 secondary schools in Sweden, I identified four themes in the ways informants talked about the transition process:  1.     Most well-established practices, relationships and collaborations could be adapted.  2.     The library room had social functions that could not be fully rebuilt online. 3.     Systematic integration, strong relationships and a culture of library use contributed to successful transitions. 4.     Work to make libraries more accessible and visible became more important. This is a two years master's thesis in Library and Information Science. / Hittills har forskningen om hur skolor har hanterat den plötsliga övergången till distansundervisning på grund av COVID-19-pandemin fokuserat till största delen på lärares erfarenheter, och skolbibliotekariers röster har inte utforskats. Denna studie syftar till att utforska övergången till distansundervisning utifrån svenska skolbibliotekariers perspektiv. Studien fokuserar på hur denna process påverkade skolbibliotekariers arbetspraktiker, och de faktorer som påverkade deras förmåga att återskapa sina vanliga verksamheter i nya format.  Studien använder ett infrastrukturellt perspektiv för att analysera skolbiblioteket som en del av en bredare skolinfrastruktur, och betraktar den påtvingade övergången till distansundervisning som ett slags “infrastrukturellt sammanbrott”. Skolbibliotek behandlas som mångfasetterade infrastrukturer, med materiella, strukturella och relationella/kulturella faktorer som alla kan bidra till deras framgång. Genom tematisk analys av semi-strukturerade intervjuer med 14 bibliotekarier på 12 gymnasieskolor i Sverige identifierade jag fyra teman i hur informanterna pratade om övergångsprocessen:  1. De mest väletablerade praktikerna, relationerna och samarbetena kunde anpassas. 2. Biblioteksrummet hade sociala funktioner som inte helt kunde återskapas på nätet. 3. Systematisk integrering, starka relationer och en kultur av biblioteksanvändning bidrog till framgångsrika övergångar. 4. Arbetet för att göra biblioteken mer tillgängliga och synliga blev viktigare.

Introduction. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how librarians in public libraries, school libraries and integ-rated libraries relate to reading for pleasure in regards to reading for development in their work with students. A conflict has been shown between promoting voluntary reading and promoting reading ability. We base our re-sults in Qvortrups theory about children as “beings” or “becomings” together with Junckers theory about the distinction between the cultures of the educational sector and the cultural sector. Method. We conducted a qualitative interview study with seven sources from the three library types. We also conducted a quantitative survey study with vignettes taken from the qualitative analysis. Analysis. The qualitative result was analysed with a conventional content analysis. We conducted three inde-pendent one way anovas to investigate if there were any differences between the library types in the survey. Results. The qualitative study showed that all sources highly valued reading for pleasure and the students right to choose literature. The school librarians more often related their work to improving reading ability and to school criteria than librarians from the other two library types. We found similar tendencies in the results from the survey sample but none of these was significant with a significance level of p < 0.05. Conclusion. Librarians from all types of libraries show a reasoning consistent with the view of children as “beings” and the culture from the cultural sector. School librarians in our results do more often than the other two library types show a view of children as “becomings” consistent with the culture from the educational sector. Therefore we would argue that it is important to watch the development with strengthened school lib-raries so that the view of children as “becomings” does not become the only perspective dominating children's daily lives. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

Studiens syfte är att undersöka hur elevers bokval påverkar lärares arbete med litteratur i klassrummet och vilka möjligheter det finns att skapa läslust i samarbetet mellan skolbibliotekarie och lärare. Resultatet bygger på intervjuer med två lärare i årskurs 2 och en skolbibliotekarie. Elevers val av böcker har synliggjorts genom en insamling av titlar som lånats under två biblioteksbesök. Tidigare forskning visar att det är fördelaktigt att låta elever göraegna bokval för att skapa läslust och utveckla läsandet. Forskning belyser ävenatt skönlitterära böcker är vanligast i klassrummen och på skolbibliotek, och att många barn tycker att icke-skönlitterära texter är svårare att läsa, än skön-litteratur. Studiens resultat visar att lärarna är medvetna om vilka genreroch teman som eleverna föredrar, men att det inte påverkar undervisningen.Resultatet visar att elever bör få tillfällen att läsa olika sorters texter och attvarierade arbetssätt är nödvändigt för att skapa läslust. Resultatet visar ävenatt samarbetet mellan skolbibliotekarie och lärare måste få ta tid för att utfalletav samarbetet ska bli lyckat.

Kvalitetskultur är en del av organisationens kultur och en viktig del av att upprätthålla eller förändra en kultur är ledarskapet. I skolorganisationer finns många krav på verksamhetens innehåll och kvalitet i form av lagar och styrdokument. Arbetet med systematiskt kvalitetsarbete ska innefatta lärare, övrig personal, elever och vårdnadshavare. Den som är ytterst ansvarig för arbetet på enhetsnivå är skolans rektor. En statlig utredning publicerad 2021 beskriver den komplexa verksamhet som ett ändamålsenligt skolbibliotek bör vara. I utredningen betonas vikten av rektors ledarskap för att skolbiblioteket ska kunna vara en del av undervisningen samt att skolbibliotekens kvalitet skall vara hög. Syftet med studien är att undersöka vilka bakomliggande värderingar som är gynnsamma för skolbibliotekets kvalitetsarbete. Vad som kännetecknar organisationskulturen hos framgångsrika skolbibliotek samt hur dessa leds och organiseras. Undersökningen är utformad genom kvalitativ metod. Samt har en abduktiv ansats. Empiri samlades in i forma av 10 semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultatet visade att även om det inte finns ett uttalat arbete med offensiv kvalitetsutveckling i de undersökta skolbiblioteksverksamheterna återfinns beteenden kopplat till värderingar för kvalitetskultur. Utöver dessa framträder ett medledarskap vilande på kompetens och delaktighet. Synen på ledarskap blir inte enbart en individ utan en kollektiv process som kräver både ledare, följare och meningsskapande sammanhang. Arbetet med skolbiblioteksverksamheten blir en tydlig del av skolans utveckling. Den gemensamma utgångspunkten för såväl rektor som skolbibliotekarie blir det lokalt utformade styrdokumentet. / Quality culture is part of the organizational culture and an important part of maintaining or changing an organizational culture is the leadership. In school organizations there are many demands on the content and quality of the activities in terms of laws and governing documents. The systematic quality work must include teachers, other employees, students and their guardians. The person ultimately responsible for the work at the school unit is the school's principal. A state surevey published in 2021 describes the complex function that an effective school library should have. The state survey emphasizes the importance of the principal's leadership in order for the school library to be part of the teaching and that the quality of the school library must be high. The purpose of this the survey is to explore which underlying values are favorable for the school library's quality work. What characterizes the organizational culture of successful school libraries and in what way are they managed and organized. This survey is designed through a qualitative method and has an abductive approach. Empirical data was collected through ten semi-structured interviews. The results showed that even if there is no pronounced work with total quality management in the school libraries inlcuded in this survey, quality culture values are found. In addition to these, a co-leadership based on competence and participation appears. The meaning of leadership becomes an individual and a collective process that requires both leaders, followers and meaning-making context. The work with the school library becomes a clear part of the school's development. The starting point for both the principal and the school librarian is the action plan which is locally designed for the school library. / <p>2022-11-08</p>

Introduction. This thesis examines how the school librarian’s work affects pupils’ reading and their interest in literature. The aim is to identify how pupils’ interest and commitment to a new book genre differs based on the level of interference from the school librarian during the presentations of this genre. Method. We have introduced new books in a new genre for pupils in a primary school in central Sweden. Our study is based on action research where we knowingly influenced the participating pupils to different extents, and examined the results of this influence. By applying a user’s perspective, we studied the pupils during their visits to the school library, held focus groups with a few pupils from each class, and gathered statistics of books being lent from the school library. Analysis. The analytical framework for this thesis combines theory from the sociocultural perspective with conceptions regarding reading strategies. Results. Our results show that the level of interference from the school librarian affected the pupils’ interest in the new book genre to a high extent. Pupils that did not have an interest in the subject beforehand gained a bigger engagement for it by reading books in the genre after the school librarian’s presentation. The pupils' interest in the new books also rose during the focus groups when they got more information about the books. Conclusion. Since the study clearly presents what difference an active school librarian’s work makes for the pupils’ reading motivation, it shows the great importance of having an educated librarian in every school library. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.