The aim of this thesis is to investigate the role of class visits to public- or school-libraries during school hours, regarding students of ages 7- 10. The research is founded on a case study on Burträsk library, and uses qualitative interviews with librarians and teachers at the nearby elementary school, and non-intrusive observations of class visits. The research questions were: - What is the function of the school's class visits to the library, for the students' reading and desire to read? - What thoughts and attitudes do the teachers and librarians who work with class visits have, about reading-promoting activities and children's reading? - How do these thoughts and attitudes express themselves, in the work with class visits? The study finds that the teachers and librarians who are part of the study have a pragmatic approach to children's reading, which places more emphasis on the children’s joy to read, than that they read a particular type of literature. The teachers 'work creates a joyful view of reading in most children who participate in class visits, and class visits seem to be of great importance for the children' s desire to read.

The aim of this thesis is to study the views of public librarians on the subject of controversial video games and how they work with them at the library. The purpose of the study is to answer these questions: What content is controversial in video games according to the librarians? How do the librarians handle the controversial games at the library? Does it exist a conflict between the users and the librarians about the controversial video games? Is it possible to see any underlying reasons or tendencies in the librarians answers? Five qualitative interviews were performed to answer these questions and the collected data was analyzed using the terms, value rationality and instrumental rationality which were collected from a theory by Geir Vestheim. The results showed that the librarians see violence, sexism and racism as controversial content in video games. They handle the games at the library by limiting the access for children with age limits and by not buying the most controversial games in some cases. According to the librarians there aren’t many conflicts with the users on the issue. The underlying tendencies in the librarians view on video games with controversial content shows signs of both value rationality and instrumental rationality. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The main purpose of this Bachelor´s thesis is to investigate the visions chief librarians have for their public libraries. The world around us and our way of living is changing as the society is changing ever more rapidly. This evolvement also influences the public library, its role for society and individuals, its activities and its design. The question is how the public library can face these changes and what function and role it can get and make for itself in the future. Through qualitative interviews with five chief librarians our aim is to answer the main question of this thesis: What are the visions that chief librarians on public libraries have for the public library´s future? This study also contain the role the chief librarians give the public library of today and what they mean is necessary for their visions to be achieved. Our theoretical choice fell upon Hvenegaard Rasmussen, Jochumsen and Skot-Hansens at this time new scientific model that reflect the library in relation to the concepts place, relations and space. The results showed that the chief librarians have a lot of visions. They’re not particularly revolutionary but more like a further development of the activities and role of the public library of today. The library must continue to be a meeting-place, a common ground for democracy and a central place in the local society with wide ranging activities for all citizens. Greater collaboration and integration plus being a creative platform for the users are also part of their visions. / Program: Bibliotekarie

This study investigates the use of the social network Facebook among 67 Swedish libraries; 27 academic libraries and 40 public libraries. Data is collected through an analysis of the libraries’ Facebook pages and through an email survey. To analyze the data, a series of statistical analyses were performed.The results indicate that the public libraries more actively posted Facebook updates than the academic libraries and that the libraries that had a policy for use of Facebook/social media more actively posted updates than those libraries that did not have such policy. The libraries use Facebook mainly to post links and photos and to announce events, provide book recommendations, and to emphasize special occasions. The public libraries posted more links and more updates about events, book recommendations, and media recommendations than the academic libraries while the academic libraries posted more updates about digital resources, research results, and job advertisements. At the majority of the libraries’ Facebook pages the communication with the users consists of one-way-communication. The most common reasons to use Facebook that the libraries report are to create a dialogue with the users, to be where the users are, to market the library and to reach out to groups that traditionally are hard to reach out to.Conclusions are that the libraries’ Facebook communication reflects the library as an institution by largely dealing with things that concerns reading and education, and that Facebook is used more as a tool for marketing than as a tool for dialogue with the users. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The purpose of this study is to describe and analyzes how the bookmobile librarians approach to purchase and selection and the range of views that may exist. The study is based on a qualitative method using a document study and three interviews included. The document study looking closely at public libraries library plans in Vastra Gotalands county. The qualitative interviews gets a closer look at librarians´approach regarding the purchase and selection and also if there are any similarities or differences between mobile library activities versus the main library.The theoretical framework is based on Sanna Taljas study where she has identified three different perspectives on the library´s music department. These are categorized as the interpretative repertoires and involves three categories of approach to quality. These are the general education repertoire, the alternative repertoire and the demand repertoire.The result of this study shows that librarians have a strong user focus when it comes to purchase and selection. They assume and takes into account all three perspectives of which the demand-driven approach seems to be the most dominant in the mobile library. The bookmobile and the main library seem to complement each other in a good way. The document study shows that mobile library activities is rarely highlighted in library plans. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how purchasingmanagers in bookshops and public librarians reason withregards to their selection of fiction literature. Nineinterviews have been conducted in this qualitative studymade in the spring of 2013; four librarians, four bookmerchants, as well as a market director of a major chain ofbookstores. Our focus has been particularly directed toascertaining what influence the cultural-political mission oflibraries have had on the process of selection, as well as theextent to which factors such as demand and quality play apart in both organizations. We have been interested inseeing how libraries and bookstores compare with regards tothese factors, because of obvious differences in their goalsand purposes. Librarians see both the benefits and flaws intheir way of working, as well as in the way in whichbookstores conduct their business, and vice versa, that theyare often successful in cooperating, like when arrangingvisits from authors etc. Bibliotekstjänst, purchasesuggestions from users, the librarians own proposals are thesources for the libraries’ selection. The decisions are madewith respect to quality, content and public value. The userinfluence have increased, and the users’ satisfaction factor ishighly important. The book merchants were sometimescontrolled from the head offices in their selection, but hadthe freedom of buying books from local authors, and thecustomers demand also had an influence. They have incommon that their selection is highly influenced by themedia. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The purpose of this thesis is to examine how five public libraries reason about the use of social media in their day-to-day work. This thesis aim to answer three research questions: What is the libraries use of social media today? How do libraries look upon their own use of social media? And have the libraries formulated any goals about their use of social media, and what are their thoughts on this? The methodology used in this thesis is a content analysis of the libraries social media and a questionnaire interview which was sent by mail to all of the libraries involved. The theoretical framework for the thesis is a model developed by Jochumsen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen and Skot-Hansen.The results of our study shows that the room of meetings, from the theoretical framework, are the most represented in the content of the social media used by the libraries. The libraries find that social media is a good way to connect and communicate with their users, but they feel that the time they spend on their social media is not enough.Our study also shows that most of the libraries have not formulated any goals for their use of social media, and that they do not have any intentions to do so. / Program: Bibliotekarie

This bachelor's thesis is an investigation into the public libraries'actions following the debate of Stina Wirséns character LillaHjärtat, featured in picture books and films for young children.The character was accused of being racist, due to its similarity tostereotypes such as pickaninnies. Because of this, the books'existence in public libraries was questioned.The purpose of this study is to investigate how librarians havedealt with these books, and what they have based their decisionson. To explore the background of these decisions we have usedPatrick Wilson's theory of cognitive authority (1983). We haveexamined which cognitive authorities have been used in thedecision-making process of how to handle the books containingLilla Hjärtat, and why these cognitive authorities have beenchosen. The method used in the study is qualitative interviewswith seven librarians working in public libraries throughoutSweden.The results of the interviews show that the librarians’ mostprominent cognitive authorities have been authors and illustratorsof children's books. Journalists and bloggers engaged in thedebate have not been given particularly big authority, and neitherhave laws or guidelines in the library field. We believe the reasonfor this is that those working with children's culture are thoughtof to be more informed in this field than those who don't, whichfinds support in Wilson's description of the theory. The cognitiveauthorities found in the study are mainly persons that thelibrarians are familiar with and have trusted before in similarquestions. / Program: Bibliotekarie

Our thesis is an analysis of four librarians view on LGBTQ and which implications these views have on the practical work with LGBTQ issues in the public library. The three ideal types we can identify are the excluding, the including, and the normcritical approach. We also want to know if the four librarians’ standpoints can be connected to the above mentioned ideal types. We can see that the area where the implementations of the three ideal types are most visible is the way LGBTQ material is displayed in the library space. An example of this is whether the library chooses to have a special LGBTQ shelf or not. Public libraries in Sweden are supposed to serve all patrons. In order to do so it is critical for the users who define themselves as LGBTQ to be able to find literature that reflect their identity. Novels with a LGBTQ-theme are hard to find in public libraries. We have come to the conclusion that education of the staff, whether longer or shorter, can make big difference in the library. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The paper aims to find out how staff and users at two public libraries and one Internetcafeuse Internet. The purpose has been to find out what they find and how they use the informa­tion they retrieve. The studies are based on eight longer interviews with the staff and 33 shorter with the users, who also were observed for a week. The paper includes a background chap­ter about Internet, search tools and the studied places. The following chapters are about pre­vious research, our survey and a discussion with the results, literature and our opinion.We have found out that Internet is usually used for information retrieval. That staff educa­tion is of importance when an implementation is made. Most of the users wanted to use Internet for free, but many of them were willing to pay a small amount. The users in the survey were very different according to age and sex.