In this Bachelor thesis, we examine how the work of the librarian has changed over the past three decades. The research questions focus on the changes in librarians´ roles and working tasks regarding factors like technique, meetings between librarians and visitors and also how to give service to visitors. We have conducted interviews with librarians at university libraries as well as public libraries. In all, there were four interviews. We have also compared the two types of libraries. We have looked closely at these factors: the tasks of the librarians, the skills needed, how the library has been used as a democratic arena, and what kinds of meetings there are among librarians and users of the library. From these themes we have created interview questions, and our analysis is structured according to the themes. We have worked from a theory on different kinds of identities within the profession. This theory is based on the works of Trine Schreiber and Anders Ørom who both are researchers in the discipline. Our conclusion, based on the interviews and also on previous research, is that earlier identified identities can be completed also with a role/identity that can be linked to a need of educating visitors, and a role/identity that regards marketing, i.e. to inform people about the library, its services and activities.

Today, one of the foremost tools used by the library staff is the library catalogue search tools. It has come to our understanding that some library staff are dissatisfied with how the search tools works. The aim of this study is to illuminate the library staff's negative experiences of the search tools, and to present a basis for future discussion and development. To our help we have used a quantitative survey which were sent to library staff that used one of the two largest integrated library systems in Sweden, BOOK-IT and Mikromarc. The questions regarded the library staff's perception of a number of features in the search tools. The results showed that in general, the overall impression of the catalogue search tools were positive, even though dissatisfaction with specific features could be observed, e.g. the system's way of handling misspellings and the ability to search the catalogue when the system is offline. This study can be seen as a small step on the way to better search tools in the library catalogue, giving the library staff better and more effective ways of providing service to the library users.

This two year master thesis reviews the possibilities for how public libraries and geriatric care can cooperate on a long-term basis. By using a project called Prosit the study shows which approaches and actions that worked in order to create this kind of successful collaboration, and which ones that didn't. The theoretical framework consists of the sociocultural perspective developed by psychologist Roger Säljö in meaning to emphasize how these two departments can learn from each other. The theory also underlines the fact that both public libraries and geriatric care can develop their own way of improving the elderly’s daily life by working together. The thesis method is qualitative and based on Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke’s thematic analysis. It’s being used because it demonstrates the general themes in the research and also reflects the six counties’ different ways of working within the project. The thesis concludes that the sociocultural perspective of learning within a group could be applied while studying these counties’ different ways of collaboration. Public libraries and geriatric care could easily learn from each other by sharing their knowledge and experience in order to create this long-term interaction. The main themes found in the material were “communication”, “learning from each other” and “time”. Each county found their own individual way to deal with different problems that occurred during the project. As it turned out, it wasn’t easy to develop a functional cooperation that would satisfy both sides and keep it that way after the project ended. Instead of getting stuck in old routines, the public libraries and geriatric care had to rethink and come up with fresh approaches to improve the elderly services and work together.  The counties which managed to do so, are the ones with an effective teamwork even today. All public libraries could learn from the project by studying how they did, or didn’t, find ways to cooperate with the geriatric care. They can be inspired and get influences by how the six counties managed to learn within the group and see each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

This bachelor's thesis purpose is to investigate how librarians think about the acquisitions of material to the library and to investigate the routines they follow in their work with the libraries collections. We also aim to investigate whether or not they think about building broad and balanced collections that represents all members of society. The questions asked are: do the librarians consciously work toward building a collection that offers something for everybody? Which groups of people do the librarians prioritize in their work with the library’s collection? Do librarians actively reflect about the content of the material they acquire? Our theoretical framework consists of a cultural science theory by Stuart Hall that claims that the discourse about objects construct how we think about the object and how we behave towards the object. The method used in this study to collect empirical data is qualitative interviews where six librarians who worked with acquisition in the library answered questions about their work regarding how they build the library’s collection. The study shows that the librarians actively work to build broad and balanced collections, however, they do not think about representation in the context of Stuart Hall. They think more practically about giving their patrons the tools to use the library and to integrate into society, rather than thinking about including them in the contents of the literature in the library’s collection. The librarians all believe that reading fiction affects the one reading it, but they are hesitant to govern the content in the literature they acquire to the library, because they feel this would violate the democratic purpose of libraries.

Two subjects which have grown constantly larger due to globalization are diversity and LGBTQ. This can be seen since people with different sexualities, religions, ethnicities and much more have become more visible in Sweden. Therefore, one can ask oneself how diverse the literature is at public libraries, especially if a certain genre such as LGBTQ is placed at a special section called rainbow shelves. This issue will be examined in this study. To show how important it is to include and acknowledge everyone and not only some groups, social recognition by Axel Honneth has been chosen as the theory of this paper. In order to see how diverse the literature in rainbow shelves are, a qualitative content analysis, based on four different semi-structured interviews with four different individuals, has been made. Only librarians from libraries which have rainbow shelves has been interviewed, but they were spread all over Sweden, from north to south. The interviews took place during April 2018. The result shows that the libraries have diverse LGBTQ-literature to a certain degree. They can only purchase as much diverse LGBTQ-literature as exists and unfortunately, there is not much diverse LGBTQ-literature available. Due to this, the four public libraries cannot acknowledge individuals who are not included in the white normativity or western standards. The discussion revealed that the rainbow shelves of the participating libraries do not represent a greater diversity. However, there are rainbow shelves where diversity is more represented than in other rainbow shelves. It was also found that there is a limited amount of multilingual LGBTQ-literature and that it is complicated to find. Not enough multilingual LGBTQ-literature is published to enable public libraries to find and make this available to a wider extent. All participating libraries work in some way to support the diversity of the rainbow shelves and make them more representative. This work is mainly done by getting inspiration from other libraries’ rainbow shelves or by searching for diverse LGBTQ-literature.

The aim of this thesis is to identify and describe how the public library in Sweden is being argued for, according to the public debate. Why do we need the public library and in what way is it unique? What functions are being expressed as vital for the public library? What discourses are being expressed about the public library? These questions are answered by doing an discourse analysis of the book ”Folkbibliotekens framtid?” [The future of the public library?] (2010), edited by Roland Eliasson, where 19 persons closely connected to the library are interviewed. Foucaults discursive theory constitutes the methodical frame for this thesis, and by using terms from the discursive theory the analysis was made in four steps. Six major functions of the public libraries were identified from the interviews: improve literacy, book- and information intermediary, democratic role, educational role, culture centre and meeting place. With the help from keywords two major discourses were identified within the material: a book discourse and a community centre discourse. The conclusion of this thesis is that in many of the dis-courses, the library is described in a romantic old-fashioned way in contrast to the new approach where the library is described as a democratic meeting place. The writer of this thesis also find that the argumentation of the public library in these interviews are in some ways week. Further research could be to study what counterarguments exists in discourses against public libraries.

Med intervjuer som metod syftar denna uppsats till att undersöka hur en hbtqsatsning på ett folkbibliotek kan se ut och vilka tankar och idéer som ligger bakom den. Syftet uppfylls dels genom en kartläggning av hbtq-satsningar på de fyra studerade folkbiblioteken och dels genom en analys av de intervjuade bibliotekariernas berättelser om hur de motiverar sitt arbete med hbtq-frågor. I analysen används begreppet uppdragslogik som ett sätt att förstå bibliotekariernas resonemang kring sitt hbtq-arbete. Kartläggningen av hbtq-satsningarna visar att vanliga arbetsmetoder är att sätta upp särskilda regnbågshyllor, att ha programpunkter med hbtq-innehåll och att synliggöra hbtq-resurser på webben. Att ha dubbla exemplar av hbtq-medier är ett vanligt tillvägagångssätt för att försöka tillgodose låntagarnas eventuella behov av anonymitet och samtidigt undvika osynliggörande av dessa resurser. Frågan om bemötande är något som flera av respondenterna har stort engagemang för. Analysen av bibliotekariernas berättelser om sitt hbtq-arbete kommer fram till att de intervjuade bibliotekarierna kan sägas agera utifrån en gemensam uppdragslogik där hbtq-frågor ses som viktigt för att uppfylla bibliotekets uppgift att vara en plats som är öppen för alla. Ett normkritiskt perspektiv lyser igenom där respondenterna ger uttryck för en uppfattning om att hbtq-frågor hör ihop med andra kategoriseringar som eventuellt kan leda till diskriminering, såsom kön, etnisk tillhörighet och funktionsförmåga. Denna uppdragslogik kolliderar ibland med kollegornas uppfattning om vad biblioteket bör prioritera för att uppnå sina mål och vad som utgör dessa mål.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka hur några bibliotekarier ser på samarbetet mellan folkbiblioteket och skolan angående deras likvärdiga läsfrämjande arbete kring barn och unga. Metoderna vi valt att använda oss av är en enkätundersökning och att se över biblioteksplanerna för de kommuner studien berör. Vi har i enkäten valt att använda oss av både öppna och stängda frågor då vi vill undersöka bibliotekariernas perspektiv på samarbetet. Resultatet vi kommit fram till är att samarbetet ser väldigt olika ut i kommunerna men även att folkbibliotekens riktlinjer är väldigt otydliga för hur samarbetet ska se ut eller inte. Många skolor saknar skolbibliotek och använder därmed folkbiblioteket som resurs till skolan vilket även flera folkbibliotek uttrycker att de inte är deras jobb att assistera skolorna.

The ability to read and write is essential to be able to live and function as an adult in today’s information and knowledge intensive society. Both public libraries and preschools have a duty to promote reading to children, but how their reading promotional activites are carried out varies. In the autumn of 2016 84 percent of all children in Sweden aged between one and five attended preschool and through collaborations between public libraries and preschools reading can be promoted to the majority of Swedish children. The aim of this study is to map how public libraries and preschools work together with reading promotion and how they view future collaborations, as well as to investigate what organisational factors that affect these partnerships. Surveys have been sent out to all main public libraries in Sweden’s 290 municipalities, and 215 completed surveys have been returned. The results shows that there is a significant amount of collaborations between public libraries and preschools in reading promotional purposes and that the public libraries use several approaches for these activities. The results also show that organisational factors such as financial circumstances and policies are of a big significance and that they affect these partnerships. It is possible to see a great interest amongst the public libraries for collaborations with preschools for reading promotional purposes, both now and in the future. Public libraries and preschools have similar missions regarding the promotion of reading, and this means that there is an opportunity for increased collaborations in the future.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the ways in which Swedish library policies embed the requirements regarding people with a mother tongue other than Swedish and the Swedish minority languages, specified in the Swedish library law. The research questions were: What services do public libraries offer people with a mother tongue other than Swedish? What conceptions of the library’s possibilities to work with integration do the library policies mediate? Are there any differences regarding how integration is worked with in municipalities that are high in numbers of foreign born inhabitants, compared to those municipalities that are low in numbers of foreign born inhabitants? In order to answer these queries a sample of library policies from 16 municipalities were chosen by amount of foreign born inhabitants. Eight were chosen with high numbers, and eight with low numbers. These policies were analysed using discourse analysis and two theories: Ragnar Audunson’s theory regarding high- and lowintensive meetingplaces, and Robert D. Putnam’s theory regarding bonding and bridging as two ways to build social capital. The study showed that the services offered to people with a mother tongue other than Swedish and the Swedish minority languages, were mainly centered around an expanded collection of media in foreign languages, language cafés, library viewings, and providing an open meeting place. The most common conceptions of the library’s role in integration were the conception of the library as a meeting place, and the conception of increasing multi language in the collection and in the cooperation with other actors and organisations. The differences found between municipalities with a high number of foreign born inhabitants, in comparison to those with low numbers, were marginal, and possibly caused by other factors than those mentioned above. It was clear that next to all library policies expressed a view of the library as a lowintensive meeting place in accordance with Audunson’s theory. It was also found that both concepts of Putnams’ bonding and bridging, were applicable to the activities that suppousedly are to take place in these libraries. Hence, the library ought to be an excellent place for people to build social capital.