The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine the librarians’ perception of the users of children’s and young people’s literature. Questions posed in this study are: How are the librarians described according to appearance, personality and interaction with the users? How are the librarians described compared to former studies on the subject? Which perception can be seen, based on Douglas Rabers’s theory which describes the role the public libraries can take in the society? The study is based on content analysis. We have examined 15 descriptions of librarians in both picture books and literature for young adults, published between 1985 and 2006. The theoretical starting-point in our study is Rabers’s theory on the three different approaches to users that a public library can take; Social activism, The conservative response and The populist initiative. The result of the analysis indicates that Raber’s Conservative response has a slight predominance in the librarians’ perceptions of the users. The all-in-all-perception that is shown in the literature for children and young adults, is that the librarians’ interactions with the users is rather tame. The librarians are often invisible and seen as part of the library inventory. However, when help is requested, most of them are kind and helpful. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine in what way library users are depicted on images at two academic libraries; the University College of Borås Library & Learning Resources (BLR) and the Gothenburg University Library (GUB). 62 images, from websites and information brochures, are analyzed and the main questions are: How are users represented on images? What activities are shown? What is the difference between BLR and GUB? How can the consequences of the representations be understood? Little is currently known in the LIS-field about how images work as constructors of the social reality. The theoretical and methodological point of departure of the study is discourse analysis, new institutional theory and picture analysis. The result of the analysis is that BLR shows a larger variety of activities than GUB, and more users using the computer. The typical user on the images from GUB is sitting in a large study hall alongside with a large number of other users. Women are more often depicted than men in the whole material and the images reveal an absence of personal-user interaction. The users are shown as independent. A general impression is that GUB, considering the long history and the unanimous images, is more institutionalized than BLR. Both the behavior of the users in the library and the making of new library images are influenced by the existing images. / Uppsatsnivå: D