The research of this Bachelor‟s thesis examines classifieds for librarians, and makes use of Ørom‟s theory of sixlibrarian identities plus Schreiber‟s complementary seventh identity. The main focus of the thesis was to examine what qualities and skills are presented and what identities are manifested in the classifieds. A third issue was to explore how relevant Ørom‟s theory is to examine and understand the profession today.The data was analysed by the use of content analysisand a hermeneutics approach was taken. We found that theskills and qualities that are considered important in the spring of 2014 were both classic librarian tasks, but that there was also a high demand for skills in pedagogy and IT. We found that personal characteristics were important in comparison to education requirements. All seven of Ørom‟s and Schreiber‟s identities were manifested in the classifieds, but the library profession has evolved beyond Ørom‟sdescription of the ideal librarian. The theory is therefore not applicable to today‟s description of the librarian professional identity. / Program: Bibliotekarie

This bachelor thesis is about communication problems and treatment during the reference interview. The purpose was to investigate the reasons of why users’ information needs are not always understood by the librarian and what to do about it. I have also investigated what kind of skills that can be useful for librarians to have and how a librarian can act in a way that makes the user feel welcome during the reference interview. The method I used was a literature study and an own study through interviews of library users. The theories I used was Taylor’s information need theory and Argyle & Dean’s equilibrium theory. The result I found was that a librarian can ask a user open questions like how the user plans to use the information in order to find out more about what kind of information needs she has. To make the user feel welcome the librarian can invite her to return if she does not find the information by herself or ask her if she is satisfied with the information the librarian found for her. It is often appreciated by the users if librarians are friendly, have patience, smile, have eye contact during the interview and show that they are really interested in helping the user. / Uppsatsnivå: C

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to investigate different ways of illustrating the information literacy of librarians and with a pragmatic view survey what has been written about marketing the librarians. The thesis is based on a marketing theory introduced by Philip Kotler. He believes that marketing is a social process and that everything can be marketed. I have reviewed three marketing strategies and their significance in marketing the information literacy of librarians. The strategies are marketing mix, event marketing and services marketing. The thesis has two parts and the first is a literature exposition of the marketing and the economic frames, investigations about the role, identity and rank of librarians and the marketing of librarians. The second part is an investigation that consists of interviews with four librarians with different experiences of marketing within the library. My conclusion is that there are useful strategies for marketing the information literacy of the librarians. Services marketing in combination with event marketing have good potential for success. A second conclusion is that it is necessary for librarians to market their competence and in that way indirectly also promote the library. With an effective marketing of the librarian competence there is also a reason to keep the title “librarian”. The competence lies not in the name, but within the person. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This master thesis concerns the subject of a reference service named Book-a-librarian. The service makes it possible for the library-user to indulge in a subject with the help of a librarian after having made an appointment in advance. The main purpose of this thesis is to study the function of it. The methods used are a mix of literature and empirical studies to be able to comprehend and explain the practical nature of the service as well as placing the service in a theoretical framework. The empirical study is performed by a questionnaire, where librarians working with the service are asked to participate. To evaluate the results of the questionnaire we have studied different scientific views of reference work in the library environment. The purpose is to identify strengths and weaknesses in the way the service is conducted. The weakness that becomes most apparent in the empirical study is the lack of users of the service. However there is a great enthusiasm for this Book-a-librarian service among the librarians. They all believe in a future for the service. To improve and develop this service we believe the solution is to have an active discussion concerning reference work as a whole and the usability of the service and finally to formulate a strategy to market it. In the final chapters we are presenting a set of recommendations for marketing this service, by studying marketing theories and validating these recommendations with professional librarians. By using marketing as a tool for development we are looking at Book-a-librarian from different perspectives, such as the importance of management, the physical atmosphere of the library and the involvement of the staff. Marketing puts focus on the user and we find that crucial for this information-based profession. / Uppsatsnivå: D

During my time as a student at the School of Library and Information Science in Borås there was an ongoing discussion regarding whether or not the library and librarian were facing an identity crisis and what future consequences this may lead to. The discussion was and still is of interest to me since it most likely will have an impact on the identity I soon will make part of my self as a professional librarian. This master’s thesis is an attempt that to through discourse analysis seek clarity in what the future identity of the library and the librarian may consist of. I do so by examining articles from the two library journals Ikoner and Biblioteksbladet. Both what is explicitly and implicitly articulated is examined. What is said and by whom is it said? An examination of 33 articles reveals a complex picture that is later distilled into five discourses where a social discourse appears as the most prominent one: the library shall have social role and act as a democratic power in society. The parts that constitute the social discourse are also to varying degree noticeable in a populistic, conservative, human and technical discourse. Between some discourses conflicts, antagonisms, are visible. For instance can be mentioned the populistic discourse which starkly contrasts the conservative – they articulate totally different views on the future identity. When it comes to answer the question ”by whom is it said” the articles examined in this study are all written by a relatively small number of writers. Therefore I come to the conclusion that it’s possible to describe some of them as dominating creators of discourse. Furthermore, the interviewees whose opinions are put in print are mostly librarians which may mean that the expressed future identity can be a form of wishful thinking on their part, from their point of view. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to study how public librarians’ view mediation of fiction: the knowledge needed, the thoughts expressed about their own and other adults reading of fiction and how the informants define their roles as mediators of fiction. The method used was qualitative interviews with six librarians at main libraries in Swedish cities of different sizes. The theoretical starting points are Louise M. Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, Michail Bachtin’s theory of speech genres and Åse Tveit’s and Jofrid Karner Smidt’s theories about mediation of fiction. For the empirical material concerning the librarians knowledge in this field of the library work the theory of three different kinds of knowledge; episteme, techne and phronesis, was applied. Furthermore, the term communities of practice was used regarding how the knowledge is acquired. The results show that reading is regarded an important activity with various functions, which the informants reflect over in their work with fiction. Three roles as mediators of fiction can be identified, not excluding one another, but instead possible to combine. The role that emphasise dialog with users is viewed as very important and is also the role that can be seen to play a great part in the development of the work with mediation of fiction. The knowledge required for this part of the librarian profession is shown to be complex and acquired in different ways. Several ideas about how the work can develop in the future are expressed.

The aim of this essay is to investigate how national and international guidelines relate to library services to prisoners in Sweden and to further illuminate this through a comparison with some examples from a few European countries. The essay examines what rights to library services Swedish prisoners are given in law, what national and international guidelines say, what demands are placed on the librarian in the form of education and suitability, what economical resources exist to realise library services to prisoners, what measures are taken to provide for language minorities, and how the security aspect is handled when it comes to computers and information technologies. The information has been obtained through interviews as well as through studies of books, articles and conference proceedings. The essay includes a small case study of how library services are provided for prisoners in Haparanda. Findings point to a gap between the goals that are presented in national and international guidelines and how the library services to prisoners function in reality. / Uppsatsnivå: C

The purpose of this Master thesis is to investigate how the relation between users and librarians is affected by higher education librarians’ talk about information literacy. The thesis uses Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis in analysing four articles written by Swedish higher education librarians and in answering how information literacy, users and librarians are constituted. The analysis indicate that the questions have no distinct answers, there are discrepancies between, as well as within the texts. The results of the analysis are discussed in three different aspects with regards to the implications of them to the purpose of the thesis. What the users need to learn in order to become information literate is constituted either by use of a techno-managerial discourse, with the risk of limiting the way users perceive information and thereby constituting the relation as unequal, or a democratizing discourse, with the possibility of empowering the users by pointing to information as individually and contextually dependent. How the users are to become information literate is influenced in part by a user-centred pedagogical discourse, constituting the users as variably active co-creators in the educational process, thus creating the possibility of a more equal relation. This relation is somewhat hampered by the librarians’ emphasise of their own expertise in the struggle for acceptance as a pedagogic, educating institution. With regards to why the users should become information literate the librarian is at risk of reproducing unequal and ideologically invested structures both within the library and in society at large. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this Bachelor’s thesis is to investigate the public librarian’s professional identity and its relation to the public library as an experience centre. The development of the library as an experience centre raises questions about how public librarians understand their professional identity, and about their motives for working with activities like workshops and qigong, activities that have no significant connection with the librarian’s traditional tasks. The data was collected via semi-structured interviews exploring the perspectives and points of view of four public librarians. A phenomenological approach was taken. The expressed experiences of the participants were categorized according to the model of Anders Ørom and Trine Schreiber, and they are the foundation for interpretation. The interviews with the public librarians revealed that the librarian’s professional identity consists of many different aspects. The librarians express different missions like mediating culture, mediating information and mediating experiences. The librarians express different motives for working with experiences; one is to attract more users. The way the librarians express their motives shows their professional identity in relation to the library as an experience centre. Arranging activities can be used as a means to mediate not only experiences but also information. The interviews also revealed that marketing can be a librarians’ mission. The model used was not sufficient to describe this mission and we have therefore created a new category that we call the marketing identity.

The purpose of this master thesis was to study the librarians’assignment at the public accesses computers, especially howthe librarians perceive what their task is and what their taskshould be.In order to answer these questions a series of ten qualitativeinterviews –inspired by the phenomenographic approach –was conducted with librarians who were employed at smallpublic libraries in municipalities with 5 000 - 25 000residents in Sweden.The conclusions in the master thesis were that librarianshave both similarities and differences in how they perceivetheir tasks at the public computers. The most essential taskwas helping the user with information seeking. Thelibrarians also perceived that it should be included in theirduties to help users with the technical/practical issues at thepublic computers. Competence, time and assets were finallythree outlying factors which affected in what extent thelibrarians were able to help the users. / Program: Bibliotekarie