The aim of this bachelor thesis is to try to make the experiences and perceptions of librarians concerning their own expertise visible and through that visualise possible competences related to writing activities taking place in public libraries today. The research questions of this thesis are: How do public librarians experience working with writing activities in relation to their expertise as librarians? Which competencies do public librarians perceive as important regarding their labour with writing activities taking place at the library today? Which work related challenges do public librarians experience in relation to writing activities? To answer these questions I have chosen a qualitative perspective. My method consists of six semi-structured interviews with public librarians, who have diverse experiences related to writing activities. The theoretical basis of this study consist of Herlings operational definition of expertise as a concept and it's related cornerstones such as foremost competences. Herlings definition is set in an organizational research tradition and focuses mainly on human resources within that. The findings of this study suggests that public librarians experience a connection between their area of expertise and writing activities. And that their related competences are useful concerning how you talk about texts in a group context.The librarians also suggest that challenges might be to find functioning forms for the activity.

The theme of this thesis is the professional ethics of public librarians. Qualitative interviews have been conducted with fourteen public librarians, with the aim to investigate their thoughts·and opinions concerning professional ethics and their experiences of ethical dilemmas in professional situations. The result shows that the majority of the librarians often discuss problems concerning what's right or wrong but that the discussions are conducted on the basis of practical situations and not in terms of professional ethics. The majority have vague ideas of how the term professional ethics should be applied on the work of public librarians, though all the interviewees consider the professional ethical discussion to be important. We examine the librarians opinions and experiences of ethical dilemmas conceming four subject areas: the principle of the librarian as a neutral and nonrestricting information intermediary, the principle of equal treatment of all the library visitors, difficulties. concerning media selection and the problems based upon the librarians flexibility towards the intemal rules of the library. The librarians experienced the behaviour towards the visitors as the greatest problem. Media selection is also concidered to be a problem area. Neither the role as a neutral intermediary nor the flexibility towards intemal rules creates major ethical dilemmas for the interviewed librarians. The results of our study is put in relation to theories concerning the role of professiona! ethics in the development of a profession.

The main purpose of this study is to gain deeper knowledge of male and female public librarians experiences from working within a female-intense profession. We have put an extra focus on competences associated to gender within the profession. Through semi-structured interviews with four female and four male public librarians we have investigated their experiences and compared them to see if there are any differences between the genders. For our analysis we have used theories about sex marking, glass escalators and glass ceilings, gender and masculinity. The conclusion of this study is that although neither the male or female public librarians experience any difficulties due to the professions status as female-intense, the majority feel that the profession would gain from more male employees. Further, both the male and the female public librarians have experienced that working with technology is considered to be sex marked as a male task. The female public librarians also have experienced expectations from the female library users to like certain genres of literature, just because they are women.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to find out how librarians working in combined school- and public libraries view their professional identity. The theoretical framework includes the seven librarian identities of Anders Ørom and Trine Schreiber combined with Beth Junckers theories of the culture sector with autotelic cultures and the education sector with instrumental cultures. The theoretical framework has been used in analyzing and discussing the results. The data has been collected through six semi-structured interviews, transcribed and processed for the analysis. The librarians were found to identify mostly with the culture intermediary identity in the culture sector. The information intermediary identity and the subject intermediary identity both were present in the school-librarian context, and the socialworking identity and the experience intermediary identity in the public-librarian context. Recommendations for further research are made based on the results.

This essay is about possible causes to the female dominance in public libraries. We have focusedon the 20th century in Sweden and the development of public libraries during this time. Forthis purpose we have done a survey of three different cities, Uppsala, Jönköping and Skara,during three different years, 1938, 1958 and 1978. We have studied salaries, gender and titlesfor the employed at the head library in each city and then made comparisons between them.In conjunction, we have also studied how women were looked upon by the rest of society,regarding their education and work opportunities.To achieve a comprehension of the society's view of women we have, in the essay, put threedifferent theories of the so called "female nature" in center. The genderization in the labourmarket has also been set to discussion.A comparison between librarians, teachers at different levels, and postoffice employees, hasalso been made regarding their salaries during the years (1938, 1958 and 1978).

The aim of this thesis is to study the reading habits of Swedish librarians visualized by librarians from Götabiblioteken – a collaboration of 14 public libraries in mid-Sweden – focusing on the reading done on their spare time, even if work-related. We started with a survey sent out to 74 librarians in October 2013, answered by 56, and followed up by interviewing 7 of them in November.We tried to answer these questions:To what extent does the working librarians read on their spare time compared to before they started working?What literature do they read, now compared to before they started working?To what extent does their perception of what they should have read affect their private reading?In what way does a librarian in the beginning of their career differ in reading habits from the reading habits of a librarian with many years in the profession?The result of our study shows that most of the librarians read as much or more than before they started to work. They are more selective in their choice of literature and are affected by their work in it in different ways. Their perception of what is needed affect their reading habits, but this seems to come from themselves and not from other librarians or the public. The answer to our last question is inconclusive, but it seems like the pressure lifts with experience.Librarians in this study put a lot of their free time into their work, in the form of reading. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this study is to examine how public librarians in small Swedish municipalities experience their professional roles. As part of examining such an abstract subject as experiences we also examine what tasks they perform, which will function as a support of the analysis. The theoretical frame-work is based on librarian identities worked out by Anders Ørom and a model of professional roles worked out by Maj Klasson. The analytical procedure consists of both deductive and inductive viewpoints. The empirical material consists of qualitative semi-structured interviews with five librarians that work in public libraries located in municipalities with less than 12 500 inhabitants. Based on the empirical material, i.e. the inductive viewpoint, four themes have been identified: interlibrary loan and service, literary knowledge, education and the multidimensional library work. The deductive viewpoint, based on the identities/roles worked out by Ørom and Klasson, results in these findings: the two identities that stand out the most are the information intermediary and the information organizer, other identities discovered are the documentalist, the social worker and the experience intermediary. In conclusion, most of the identities that Ørom worked out can be identified, but it is fairly difficult placing the statements of the informants in only one identity as one and the same expression can be interpreted into several different identities.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to accomplish an understanding for how librarians purchase fiction literature in public libraries. To answer these questions, we have performed four qualitative interviews with librarians in three Swedish municipalities. We have also performed a smaller document study to give us an overview of the used guidelines at the selected libraries. The results of our survey have been analyzed on the basis of our revised version of Sanna Talja’s model The Interpretative Repertoires of the Music Library. Our findings show that the librarians in our study are using several documented guidelines and standards in their work. The standards considered to be most important appear to be the librarians own experiences, while the library’s cultural documents and library plans are their primary source for guidelines. The purchase process is handled differently in all of our examined libraries, and because of the literary institution’s constant change, there could be several problems concerning selection when it comes to quality. The public’s demand for literature is considered a priority when the interviewed librarians make their selection, which is also influenced by the librarians’ own tastes.

The aim of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine how public librarians inspire children aged 9-12 years through book clubs. The study is based on five semi-structured phone interviews with leaders of book clubs. I made a qualitative content analysis of the interviews. In the interviews we focused on how they planned, performed their work, possibilities they could see, and finally challenges to be considered. This was later analysed from the perspective of Chambers theory of the reading circle, which he presents in his study Tell me : children, reading and talk . This theory shows the process of how children, with the adult’s support, can choose, read and react to literature. My conclusions based on the study are that the public librarians want the children's experience of the book club to be fun and not remind them of school. It’s a place where they can meet others and discuss literature they’ve been reading.

The purpose of the study is to reach knowledge about how public librarians understands and describes environmental scanning as a working process in a Swedish public library. The study consists of 5 interviews with public librarians working within the same organization. The empirical material is presented in two ways. The first one is what aspects of the external world the librarians find important. The second is through a theoretical framework based on Magnus Hoppes model of environmental scanning, including communication and cognitive processes aswell as ways of analyzing information from the external world. Analysis shows that the relationship between the library it's environment requires different kinds of environmental scanning, often directed by the interests and professional ideals of the individual librarian. / Program: Bibliotekarie