This thesis studies web based services for researchers, what kind of services are provided and how they are presented on the web, at five Swedish universities. In the digital age, the academic libraries have got to review how they reach researchers and what kind of services they can present to them. Since most of the resources used by researchers are available through the web, web based support services for the universities researchers can be a way to market the campus library as relevant. The study is conducted using a User Experience framework to explain the users way from the universities main home page to the services specifically aimed at the researchers. The services provided through the web page specifically for researchers are then analyzed with the help of a theory regarding primary and secondary services for researchers. The findings are that the services for researchers vary slightly, both in presentation and content. The web pages specifically aimed at researchers are similar but can be divided into three groups of different design and interface. Services that are provided on four of five of the universities library web pages are services regarding reference service programmes, information seeking, open access and publishing.

This thesis takes its point of departure in how the digitization of research libraries has changed how researchers search for information. The study examines how digitization has affected the library and librarians. It investigates the information seeking and information needs of researchers within a specific context i.e. the Institute of Biomedicine at the University of Gothenburg. It explores how researchers search for relevant information and whether the support provided by the Gothenburg University Library is sufficient for their (information) needs. Interviews were conducted with seven researchers at different stages of their career. This was complemented with a review of user studies research in library and information science (LIS) as well as reports from different universities.The results show that on one hand the researchers are satisfied with the information they retrieve from searching in PubMed and Google and do not want assistance from the library regarding this. On the other hand they do want support with other specific tasks i.e. data curation, making graphic figures, registration of information in the university’s repository. The study concludes by discussing how librarians have become invisible to the researchers due to digitization of the research library and to gain visibility the library needs to proactively seek the researchers’ attention and create places to interact.

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to investigate if the library can be a real partner for researchers in managing and dealing with their research information. In this study, six researchers have been interviewed about their problems with information management. This study uses the method Critical Incident Technique for the interviews with the researchers. This method focuses mainly on problems and what happens around those problems. The interview results have been prepared with automatic clustering and analysed with the help of a theoretical model from Minnesota University Library. This is a model of the scholarly research process described in four overlapping areas: 1) Discover, 2) Gather, 3) Create and 4) Share. The studies result gives that there seems to be no problem with accessing full text information, the problem is rather narrowing down the search to get enough time to read it all. The researchers do not find any search skills in the library that match their own search skills. On the question if the library works well as a partner, the answer in this study is no. The researchers do not see the library as a partner in working with research information, but only as a supplier of documents. When they need assistance, they turn to colleagues, students, email, and as a last resort, the library.