This master thesis is aiming to find out how school libraries work towards children in school years 1-6. The mainfocus is how the school librarians and teachers work with literature and reading. The theoretical viewpoints aremainly the sociocultural theory and the child perspective.The study was conducted with participants from five different schools in Uppsala, in the form of qualitativesemi-structured interviews. The results show that schools work with literature first and foremost in a pragmaticway, with reading-strategies and activating discussions. Very little time is spent on reading for its own sake. Thegeneral opinion is that the school libraries could – and should – be used more in the daily school work. Thelibrarians claim that they lack both time and financial resources to execute certain projects or be able to offer awider diversity of material. Finally, it is obvious that school libraries vary a lot in both ambition and resources.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine whether there is a connection between distance to the schoollibrary and the extent to which teachers are using it as an integral part of their teaching. The study aims to answerif the physical distance to the school library is affecting teachers' ways of working with the library, if it affects thecollaboration between teachers and librarians and finally if teachers that are using a school library outside theschool premises are doing so less as an integral part of their teaching compared to teachers that have access to aschool library within the schools premises.The study is based on qualitative interviews with six teachers in the intermediate stage of the nine-yearcompulsory school, of which three have access to a school library within the school premises and three haveaccess to a school library outside the school premises. The two groups of teachers are compared in order to findout if there is a connection between distance to the school library and the usage of it. Loertscher's school librarymedia program and teacher taxonomy have been used as a theoretical framework.The study shows that the teachers who use a school library within the school premises have a bettercollaboration with the librarians than the ones who use a school library outside the school premises. The studyalso show that theese libraries are an integral part of the teaching to a higher degree. However, it is not shownbeyond doubt that the physical distance to the library is the determining factor for the teacher's results. Otherfactors, such as the fact that the school libraries outside the school premises at the same time are functioning aspublic libraries, may also have influenced the result.This is a two years master's thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

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This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries. The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory. The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups. The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity. The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful. The study also shows that an integration of new media in the school and in the library is necessary if children's reading skills are to be improved.

Skillnader i uppdrag och mål kan orsaka spänningar i samarbetet mellan folkbibliotek och skola. I skolor som dessutom saknar eget skolbibliotek kan den problematiken öka ytterligare då skolan är i behov av skolbibliotekstjänster vilka inte ingår i folkbibliotekets uppdrag. Samtidigt kan ett samarbete med skolorna bidra med många fördelar för folkbibliotekets läsfrämjande arbete. Den här studien ämnar undersöka hur folkbibliotekarier förhåller sig till sitt läsfrämjande uppdrag gentemot barn och unga i samarbete med skolor med bristande skolbiblioteksverksamhet. För undersökningen genomfördes en kvalitativ intervjustudie med ett urval av fyra folkbibliotekarier. Resultatet har analyserats utifrån Hultbergs teori om läsfrämjande strategier. Sammanfattningsvis visar resultatet av undersökningen att folkbibliotekarierna främst förhåller sig till samarbeten med skolor med bristande skolbiblioteksverksamhet utifrån ett eget intresse för det egna läsfrämjande uppdraget. Studien kommer också fram till att de spänningar som folkbibliotekarierna upplever i samarbetet med skolorna beror på bristen av valfrihet, frågan om att kompensera för den bristande skolbiblioteksverksamheten samt missförstånd om vad folkbiblioteket kan erbjuda skolorna. / Differences in missions between public libraries and schools can cause tension while cooperating. For public libraries to cooperate with schools with deficient school libraries can be even more problematic, when the school is in need of school library services that is not a part of the public library mission. Meanwhile, a cooperation between public libraries and school can have several advantages for the public libraries in their mission of reading promotion. This study aims to examine how public librarians relate to their work with reading promotion towards children and young adults in collaborations with schools that have deficient school libraries. Qualitative interviews were carried out with a selection of four public librarians. The results were analysed in comparison to Hultbergs theory of strategies for reading promotion. In conclusion, the results of the study show that mainly relate to the cooperation with schools with deficient school libraries in terms of a self-interest for their reading promoting mission. The study also shows that the tension in cooperating with schools with deficient school libraries, as lived by the public librarians, is caused by a lack of freedom of choice, the question of compensating for the deficient school libraries and a misunderstanding of the public library mission.

<p>The aim of this two years master's thesis is to examine public librarians’ views of their pedagogical role towards school children, and to illustrate the relationship between public libraries and schools as a background for the role of the public librarians. The theoretical framework is Carol Cullier Kuhlthau’s theory of the roles of librarians as mediators in reference work (Levels of Mediation) and in education (Levels of Education). The main question of the study is: How do public librarians view their pedagogical role towards elementary school pupils and high school students? Related questions regarding the use of the public library for school purposes, the communication and cooperation between the public library and the schools, the difference between public libraries and school libraries and the librarians’ view of pedagogical work are also made.</p><p>The method used is qualitative interviews. These are made with seven public librarians from different libraries in different communities. The study shows that the librarians are aware of their pedagogical role towards school children, but still the role is unclear and difficult to distinguish from the roles of other formal mediators such as school librarians and teachers. The study also shows that a number of conditions, such as the organization of the schools’ library use and the communication and cooperation with the schools affect the pedagogical role of the librarians. They are also affected by the traditional role of the public librarian, which is to be at the user´s service rather than working as a counselor. However, the public librarians in this study believe that the ideal way to work with school children is to support their learning process.</p>

The aim of this two years master's thesis is to examine public librarians’ views of their pedagogical role towards school children, and to illustrate the relationship between public libraries and schools as a background for the role of the public librarians. The theoretical framework is Carol Cullier Kuhlthau’s theory of the roles of librarians as mediators in reference work (Levels of Mediation) and in education (Levels of Education). The main question of the study is: How do public librarians view their pedagogical role towards elementary school pupils and high school students? Related questions regarding the use of the public library for school purposes, the communication and cooperation between the public library and the schools, the difference between public libraries and school libraries and the librarians’ view of pedagogical work are also made. The method used is qualitative interviews. These are made with seven public librarians from different libraries in different communities. The study shows that the librarians are aware of their pedagogical role towards school children, but still the role is unclear and difficult to distinguish from the roles of other formal mediators such as school librarians and teachers. The study also shows that a number of conditions, such as the organization of the schools’ library use and the communication and cooperation with the schools affect the pedagogical role of the librarians. They are also affected by the traditional role of the public librarian, which is to be at the user´s service rather than working as a counselor. However, the public librarians in this study believe that the ideal way to work with school children is to support their learning process.

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.

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 &lt; 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.

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.