The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to describe the development of the most important libraries in Skövde, starting from 1830. We conclude our examination about 1940, when the municipal library has been active for almost ten years, and the libraries started by the temperance and working-class movements have been deposited at the municipal library. In order to explain this process we describe the development of the Swedish public library and its predecessors, such as reading societies and the popular national movements’ libraries, as a background and comparison to the early libraries in Skövde. We describe the most significant libraries that existed in Skövde during this period, starting with a reading society in 1830. We continue with a commercial lending library and a couple of popular national movements’ libraries, before we discuss the municipal library. The municipal library in Skövde opened quite late, almost 15 years after the decision in the municipal council. We examine what happened in the meantime, and introduce Major Eric Uggla who played an important part in this process. To explain his role in this development, we have done a simplified structure/actor analysis, based on a model by Lennart Lundquist, professor of political science. / Uppsatsnivå: D

In this masters paper the change that Lidköping public library went through between 1952 and 1959 is described and analysed. The aim is to describe and analyse the reactions that arose at the time that the first professional librarian, Jörgen Elgström, acted to create a modern public library in the town. The issues that are handled are: How did the local politicians and the general public react to the process of change that was started by Jörgen Elgström? What were the consequences for the staff, the premises, lending, child and youth activities? The paper is concentrated around the period 1952-1959 because this is the time when Jörgen Elgström was working in Lidköping. Jörgen Elgström has a central role in the paper. Elgström’s actions resulted in, for example, an increase in library staff, the founding of a child and youth library as well as that the library merged with the ABF library. A short history of the library’s early history is given to create background. A chapter is included on the development of the librarian profession in Sweden together with a chapter detailing three actors who during their respective periods have acted for library activities both nationally and locally. The paper is a qualitative case study that is first and foremost meant to illustrate Lidköping’s situation but it also gives examples of how it could have been in other library contexts in Sweden at the time. A large part of the empirical material consists of records and newspaper articles, so source criticism has been a suitable method to employ. The paper’s theoretical starting point consists of an actor perspective connected to a structure perspective and progresses to show how the actors integrated with society’s structure and vice versa. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine the discourses about Malmö public library that can be identified in several documents published by the library, articles, and various WebPages. Furthermore, our intention is to study the relation between the library’s identity, image and profile. The questions posed in the study are: Which identity discourses are Malmö public library giving expression for? What kind of conflicts between these discourses can we find? How is the identity, image and profile of the library in relation to one another? How does Malmö public library profile and market itself as a non-profit organization? Our theoretical and methodological building ground is in the discourse analytical field, with Enesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’s theories about discourse and society, as a starting-point. The method used is discourse analysis. The results of the analysis is that the library is influenced by two major discourses, the educational/informational discourse, which can be characterized by the concepts high culture, reading, books, adult education, tradition, nostalgia, production. The other major discourse is the joy/experience discourse which can be characterized by the concepts popular culture, new medias, experiences, renewal, future, consumption. Furthermore, our result implies that these two discourses operate in different levels within the organization. The educational/informational is more frequently seen in documents of a very broad and general function, hence the joy/experience discourse is observed on a more concrete level of the organization. This led us to the conclusion that a gap between identity, profile and image existed. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to study resource allocation among district libraries within Stockholm’s City Library (SSB) on three different occasions – 1996, 2001 and 2005 – and to examine whether there exist any inconsistency between the state of the allocation of resources and what might be considered reasonable. During the course of the study, it became apparent that some measurements are more relevant than others when determining whether the allocation of resources is reasonably fair. The most relevant ratio is the share of net cost per capita in relation to population and the population’s composition of children, youngsters and persons with foreign background as a result of relevant political governing documents giving priority to these three groups. The discerned pattern is that a majority of those libraries that over the years have functioned as superior or coordinated libraries have - in relation to their share of the population and regardless of the population’s composition - had a consistently higher share of resources. Those libraries participating in the district board attempt have had a higher share. A third group is a small number of branch libraries which when threatened with closure have been saved by local opinion mobilizing and which where subsequently awarded a nominally larger share of available resources. It would appear to be the case that some libraries within SSB have ended up in bad and good circles, respectively, in terms of resource allocation as was the case in Anna Rydén-Hamström’s study 2003 of libraries in the municipality of Uppsala. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the quality notions used by the library personnel responsible for the video game department at Malmo City Library. Furthermore, the thesis aims to assess how these notions of quality relate to properties of the actual collection of video games. The empirical results are based on interviews with the responsible library personnel. The result is then analyzed by an interpretation of Carl Gustav Johannsen’s library adapted, theory-based, model of quality definitions. In order to assess relevant properties of the video game collection, we performed a categorization according to the genre-based framework of Andrew Rollings and Ernest Adams and, to a lesser extent, the work on video game genres by Mark J. P. Wolf. The results indicate that Johannsen’s proposed perspectives on quality correspond well to the views expressed by the interviewed personnel. However, the properties of the video game catalogue imply a collection lacking in multitude, in many ways identical to the current ratio of the commercial market. The thesis argues that the cause of this discrepancy lies partly in a lack of documentation and guidelines concerning on what grounds the video games should be acquired. A more detailed policy concerning ways of implementing the available perspectives on quality into the routines of acquiring the actual collection could perhaps identify problems and remedy the situation indicated by the thesis. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The subject this thesis will investigate concerns the matter of how political ideologies exist within public libraries with a focus on the democratic ideal. Public libraries are part of the political system and we want to show how political ideologies take their shape in public libraries and the possible consequences of this. With the help of three major political ideologies, liberalism, conservatism and socialism we investigate how the democratic ideals of these ideologies are expressed in documents that describes activities the libraries will and have performed. In order to identify these ideologies we use discourses in cultural policy as a bridge between the investigated documents and the political ideologies. As an analytical tool we have developed a model that describes the relation between text, discourse and ideology which we use in our analysis. The results of our analysis shows that there is an imbalance concerning how much influence the different ideologies have over the activities in the public libraries, where we have seen that the liberal ideals have the upper hand. These results are similar to those of previous researchers and we think it is important for the public libraries to be aware of the influence political ideologies have over cultural policy, on all levels, in order to be an objective institution for the citizens in our society.

The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine the discourses aboutthe future of Malmö City Library expressed by the chief librariansSven Nilsson and Elsebeth Tank. Furthermore, our intention is tostudy the relation between the two. The questions posed in thestudy are: how does chief librarian Sven Nilsson express the futureof Malmö public library between 1989-1997? How does chieflibrarian Elsebeth Tank express the future of Malmö City Librarybetween 2008-2010? How does Sven Nilsson’s and ElsebethTank’s thoughts and visions of the future correlate?Our theoretical and methodical building ground is in the discourseanalytical field, with Ernesto Laclau’s and Chantal Mouffe’stheories about discourse and society, as startingpoint. The method used is discourse analysis.The results of the analysis gave us four different discourses per chief librarian. The result of Sven Nilsson reveals: The qualified personal discourse, The well supplied media discourse, The discourse of the self educated user and The discourse of the social room. The result of Elsebeth Tank reveals: The discourse of the innovative personal, The discourse of the edited media collection, The discourse of the interactive user and The discourse of the library without walls. We also found connections between the chief librarian’s visions about the future. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this bachelor-thesis is to study how the City Library in Norrköping, in collaboration with the outpatient centre, Gränden, has assisted people with substance abuse problems through a bibliotherapeutic reading circle known as, Människor mellan raderna (People between the lines). My theoretical framework is based upon Ruth M. Tews and Berth Danermark’s theories. Tew states that in order to create a well-functioning team consisting of various professional competences, each individual needs to possess certain character traits including the ability to contribute with their unique competence and an openness to receive and absorb the other participants’ contributions. According to Danermark, a collaborative project can be a stimulating and enriching process provided that the right conditions are created and adequate resources are made available. In order to answer the research questions, I conducted interviews with the librarian and the two therapy assistants who collaborated in hosting and facilitating ‘Människor mellan raderna’, as well as the chief librarian and the director of social services. I identified a common positive attitude towards collaboration among the informants/participants. One explanation for this may well lie in the fact that the different professional competencies found within the group complemented one another. The statements of the interviewees were found to be consistent with the theories postulated by Tew and Danermark concerning collaboratives of well-functioning teams. In conclusion, I can confidently recommend bibliotherapy as a way of improving and fortifying collaboration between different professional groups - provided that adequate resources are received, including the funding of research and development of bibliotherapeutic methods. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The library in general has been faced with a new society with changed forms of communication. This means that the development has altered the use of media in general, but also that the communication from traditional oral and written to digital communication. The aim of this study is to investigate how communication between libraries and users has changed in the more digital society. The thesis is about communication between libraries and users by means of digital channels. I have conducted interviews with librarians who handle communication within their respective public libraries and to find out how they handle communication with their users via digital channels and other means. In the study, I chose to use a qualitative method that consisted of five semi-structured interviews. I analyzed the results using the Marketing mix theory. The results of the study show that according to the participants, the presence of social media has changed how libraries communicate with their users, as they have given the libraries several channels of communication. Hence the increased part of citizens with a digital presence gives libraries the opportunity to disseminate information about the library to a larger number of users or future users.

The purpose of this study is to perform both a quantitative and language philosophical analysis of the folksono-my and the tags in the Stockholm public library catalogue, which together with the Umeå university folksonomy, and the folksonomy of the Norrköping public library are the only library folksonomies in Sweden. The purpose of the first part of the study is to perform an analysis of the linguistical structure of the tags in the folksonomy. To do this a quantitative analysis has been conducted to grammatically categorize and evaluate tags using a method based on Louise Spiteri‟s article “The structure and form of folksonomy tags: the road to the public library catalogue” and the SAO guidelines. This part of the analysis aims to answer questions like: what characteristics do the tags in the folksonomy have and in what ways do they separate themselves from subject headings in a controlled vocabulary? Tags were here categorized according to grammatical properties like parts of speech and their social and private characteristics. A discussion regarding different semantical problems in folksonomies was conducted along with a comparative analysis between the SSB tags and the subject headings of SAO. Based on the findings from the first part of the analysis, the second part aims to answer questions about the use and meaning of tags within a folksonomy. The later theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein are used to discuss the findings of the first analysis. There is a twofold focus here: firstly, on the potential of seeing a folksonomy as a language game, and secondly, on the private characteristics of tags. The latter being a thought that so far has been neglected in studies of library and information science. This part of the analysis aims to discuss the possi-bilities of seeing a folksonomy as a language game and what it is that makes tags in a folksonomy meaningful. It also aims to discuss the possibility of seeing tags as private sensations. Different examples and discussions from Philosophical investigations are used as a theoretical framework in the analysis. The results of the analysis show that tags in the SSB folksonomy mostly consist of single-word terms  - nouns written in indefinite and concrete article  - and that they have a high social value. They highly correlate with subject headings either fully or as see also references. It also shows that folksonomies can be seen as both primitive and more advanced language games, plus that the meanings of tags are derived from the context in which they reside and the context of the folksonomy users. Discussions also show that tags may or may not be seen as private sensations depending on individual perspectives regarding the matter.