The purpose of this master’s thesis is to investigate children’s access to specific children’s activities at Swedish public libraries 2005. The thesis is based on literature studies and qualitative interviews with children’s librarians, library directors and local politicians at two demographically different libraries in Gothenburg.The sub questions are: What measures exist to promote children’s access to public libraries and children’s activities when it comes to: law and other political statements: different efforts on the state level and different efforts on the municipal level in the direct activity with children at public libraries? What driving forces and needs justify activities for children at public libraries? How will the responsible persons judge that the efforts are sufficient? The result of the study shows that children’s access to library activity has increased in the last couple of years due to reorganization, economic savings with closing down of library affiliates and because libraries have given priority to other things, like IT and new media. Children’s librarians have got new assignments and less time for children’s activity.The conclusion of our investigation is that children’s librarians are ambitious in their work, but unfortunately don’t give children’s library activity adequate resources. Maybe due to the unwillingness of library directors and politicians to give priority to any target group before another group, despite their commission that children shall be given priority at Swedish public libraries. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this Master's thesis is to investigate the library needs of distance students. This user study has a student perspective and concentrates on the main question of which way library needs might be expressed by distance students. Associated topics addressed by this study include; the problem of learning centres lacking their own library support, how distance students look upon library support as a concept and whether distance students prefer public libraries or university libraries, and why they make this choice. These questions may give the answer to how distance students deal with information literacy. Theories chosen by the study are in the fields of pedagogical and library science, the social cultural theory by Roger Säljö and in Tom Wilson's theories on user studies and information needs. The method chosen is a qualitative study where eight distance students have been individually interviewed. The results show a number of findings; that distance students prefer public libraries to university facilities, that knowledge levels on information literacy are low and that there is little education currently in information literacy and library support. The conclusion is to provide better and clearer library support at the start of a distance programme in order for students to practice these skills as soon as possible. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether there is a correlation between the vision of the public library as expressed in “A new model for the public library” and how public libraries and its services are conveyed to newcomers to Sweden. Our two research questions inquire about the ways the public library and its services are conveyed and the challenges faced by public libraries in  communicating public libraries to newcomers? The method used for this study is semi-structured interviews with five public librarians working with multicultural issues at their workplaces. This study is theoretically grounded in the model for the public library proposed by Jochumsen, Rasmussen Hvenegaard and Skot-Hansen. The findings reveal that the model correlates quite well with how librarians describe their work in relation to newcomers.