Författare/Author Isabella Mörkberg Svensk titel ”Förskolebiblioteken i Lund” – En kvalitativ studie av ett läsfrämjande projekt English Title ”Förskolebiblioteken i Lund” – A qualitative study of a reading promotion project Handledare/Supervisor Anne-Christine Norlén Abstract This master thesis is written in the scientific field of library – and information science. The purpose of the study is to investigate how the project Förskolebiblioteken i Lund helps promote reading among preschool children. The project is a collaboration between pedagogues in the preschool, children’s librariens and the children’s perents. The preschools that I invested are located in different socioeconomic areas in Lund. The idea of the essay is based on the falling figures in reading comprehension and how to get children in the preschool interested in literature.The theoretical framework is based om Aidan Chambers circle of reading and the three different approches of reading. The methods used are qualtative interwievs with pedagogues and children's librarians and cause studies with observations of preschool libraries. The project Förskolebiblioteken i Lund is working to promote reading through reading literature, dramatization and storytelling. The pedagogues and children’s librarians think it is important to let the children read for pleasure and not for constraint. Promoting literature reading should be a given part in the preschool and the literature needs to be available. The pedagogues have noticed that the children more often asks about reading books after the library established in the preschool. Ämnesord läsfrämjande, bibliotek och förskola, språkutveckling, barnbibliotekarier, förskollärare   Key words Reading promotion, Libraries and preschool children, Language development, Children's librarians, Preschool teachers

The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how some children's librarians view their working situation. There is one main question and three subquestions at issue: How is the working situation of the children's librarians today described by agents on the library field? - Are children's librarians ascribed any value and has this changed during the last three decades'? - What is the apprehension of children's librarians and what qualities should they possess? - What is considered to be most important about work of children's librarians'? The thesis is based on qualitative interviews with children's librarians, library managers and library consultants. The interviews are analysed by the help of Pierre Bourdieu theoretical concepts; capital, habitus, field, doxa and distinction. Today, children's librarians are ascribed capital by their librarian colleagues because of their specialist qualifications. Also agents outside the library field ascribe them capita) and the capital has increased. The children's librarians have developed strategies to maintain and increase capital. They look after their interests at the library and develop collaborations with other municipal institutes. The habitus of children's librarians includes characteristics like being committed, creative, outgoing and able to communicate with children on children's turns. They are educated in to their habitus at librarian's meetings, extension courses and interaction with each other. According to themselves, the most important parts of their work, their doxa, regards children's reading and language. Their situation of work is trying, and they do not feel that their ideas get the same attention as earlier. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this thesis is to gain knowledge and examine the ways of how librarians work on promoting children’s and especially boys, in the age of 9-12, reading and literacy. The intention has also been to examine the goals in relation to promoting children’s reading and the choices behind the different methods.The research is founded on qualitative semi-structured interviews with five children’s librarians. Aidan Chambers “The Reading Circle” is used as a tool to analyze the different methods and approaches that librarian’s use in their work to promote reading. “The Reading Circle” consists of four themes, “Selection”, “Reading”, “Response” and “the enabling adult”.The results of this study partly show that all of the librarians acknowledge a shortage of primarily time but also money. They believe that the cooperation with schools is of importance and something they wish to expand. The conclusions are that librarians work with reading promotion is time-consuming. In that aspect they feel that they cannot be enabling adults. Another conclusion we found is that they all felt a strong need to be up to date with new research and applying that research to their own work.

The aim of this bachelor's thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of the subject which is about children's librarians and how they look at their professional identity when it comes to the work they do with bi- and multilingual children. This comes mainly from what we have read in earlier publications that exists in the subject as a whole. The analytical framework for the thesis is based upon Anders Ørom and Treine Schreibers professional identities written in the 1990's. The method for the thesis is made up of six semistructured interviews with children's librarians. The main results we got out of this thesis are that all of the professional identities could be found in the respondents for this study. We also found that several of the identities coexisted in parallel within the respondents.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the methods used by teachers and childrens' libra­rians concerning their work with fiction at the junior school level. Based on a series of qualitative interviews and by compiling a list of short summaries of literature relevant to our thesis we wished to reflect on the manner in which the respondents see themselves in their teaching roles.We also wanted to discover what problems they had in their work and what visions they held for the future. The methods used by the teachers were mainly: reading- both aloud and individually, process-oriented writing, use of fiction in thematic studies and dramatization. The teachers' aspirations for the future included a centrally situated school library and further education in children's literature. The teachers take the needs of their pupils as a starting point and build on these needs - using many years of literary teaching experience as a foundation."Booktalks" for the children and intermediaries (teachers ...)and education in books and library systems are the childrens' librarians main literaturepedagogic methods. To continue developing networks with "important adults" and working even closer with intermediaries are the librarians' visions for the future. They also aspired for some education in pedagogics.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the prerequisites for children’s participation in the activities of the public library as expressed by six children’s librarians. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out to investigate how the librarians interpreted the concept of participation and viewed power issues between children and adults. Further, difficulties and possibilities experienced in working with children’s participation and manifestations of children’s participation in everyday library work were also investigated. The theoretic framework of the thesis was based on childhood theory together with concepts drawn from Gallagher on childhood and power relationships in work involving children’s participation. The results reveal that participation is viewed as a complex and problematical concept. The informants interpretations vary from participation as passive observers to involvement, at least to the extent of being asked to participate in the planning of activities at libraries. Although aware of the imbalance of power between adults and children, the informants described difficulties in allowing children to take control. A lack of time was found to be the greatest hinder in working with participation. Time, they argue, is required in order to create security, to build relationships and to be able to reflect on participation processes. The most common manifestation of children’s participation is the use of children’s suggestions for buying library materials. However, we conclude that children are in fact participative in that they have access to libraries guided by a child perspective. Children are listened to and respected by the children’s librarians although there is still much that can be done to improve the extent of children’s participation in everyday library work. / Program: Bibliotekarie

This master’s thesis deals with the issue of children’s theatre at the public library. I want to examine what purpose children’s theatre play for the children according to the children’s librarians, what different factors that may influence the purchase of plays to the public library and what the children’s librarians think of the children’s theatre at the public library at present and in the future. Interviews have been conducted with four children’s librarians, at different libraries, who are somehow involved in the purchase of children’s plays to the library. The material has then been analysed with the help of the theories and earlier research. The theories applied consist of two different parts. Firstly, I look into the new way of looking at childhood as a social construction, which has emerged in the last couple of decades. This is used as a framework and is applied on the thesis as a whole. I also apply Karin Helander’s theory of the three purposes of children’s theatre. The findings show that the librarians think that all three purposes of children’s theatre are important, but the most important one is the educational purpose. At the purchase of children’s theatre there are a lot of factors to take in consideration, the librarians find the most important ones to be those of practical origin, for example the premises available and the price of the performances. All of the librarians think that the children’s theatre is important at the public library but time and money are the biggest threats towards it. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to gain insight into the attitudes of children´slibrarian towards the position of the printed Children’s book in today’s medialandscape. The reason for our interest is our belief that librarian’s attitudes to newmedia and their work practice have an effect on how children perceive books andreading. The study is built on qualitative interviews among four children’s librarians.Our theoretical framework stems from a variety of researchers within the fields ofpedagogy and media studies such as David Buckingham, Sonia Livingstone, NeilPostman, Ylva Ellneby and Margaret Mackey. We use their theories to analyse andinterpret results from the interviews. This study reveals a considerable consensus thatthe printed children’s book is considered to be of importance as a means for learningto read and to develop the imagination. The most important conclusion that can bedrawn from the study is that new media is a stronger competitor to the printed bookparticularly in socio-economic poorer areas, and because of this, it is of greaterimportance for librarians to be aware of children’s media worlds in these areas. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this study is to examine the roles of the children’s librarian in a reading aloud context. To reach understanding in this subject, we have conducted interviews with four Swedish librarians working in public libraries whom are involved with reading aloud practices. Previous research shows that the reasons for reading aloud in libraries are diverse and plentiful. Such reasons can be to spread cultural experiences, help children develop their language skills and promote the library to the public. The research also shows that librarianship has shifted towards a more information and technology oriented line of work due to the advancement of society as a whole. For the analysis we use the models for role characterization constructed by Maj Klasson and the role descriptions by Linda Nilsson. The results showed that many roles exist cooperatively and many positions towards the patrons can be seen. There is no indication that the work of the children’s librarian in a reading aloud context has been modernized in any technical sense – the book and the social interaction still remain the core.

Our aim with this study was to investigate children’s librarians' opinions and working methods, in regard to the children’s library section in public libraries, for children 0-6 years old. We did this through semistructured interviews with five children’s librarians. The results were analyzed using thematic analysis and a theoretical model. The results we gathered were largely related to the theoretical model we used and could also be related to earlier research in this field. We found that most of our participants wanted the children’s library section to be calm, cozy and exciting, which the librarians actively worked to contribute to. We also related our findings to participation and empowerment of children. Our conclusion in this study was that our sample of participants was too small to make generalizations, but we have contributed with more knowledge in this research field. Although more research is needed to make generalizations.