Information literacy is a concept that has been widely discussed in a college setting for a long time. Many studies discuss possible definitions and outlooks on information literacy, as well as the importance of developing methods to advance this concept. Despite this, little research have been published which discuss how Swedish college libraries define and teach information literacy on a national level. The aim of this thesis is to provide an overview on how Swedish college libraries teach information literacy by looking at their websites and the services they provide to students. A content analysis was used to do this. The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education by the Association of College& Research Libraries has been used to define information literacy in a college setting and to analyze the content found on the websites. The findings show that a majority of Swedish college libraries provide a large amount of web- based services regarding information literacy to their students. Differences do exist, especially between public and private schools, but they use similar tools for teaching information literacy and their content is similar as well, indicating they have similar views on what a student needs to learn in order to be considered information literate.

This Bachelor thesis studies the use of student employees at academic libraries, a subject that has been paid little attention in Swedish library and information science. The aim is to contribute with an increased knowledge and deeper understanding of how the work of student employees can be understood in relation to the library’s quality and accessibility. The main questions examine underlying causes for staffing with students, their tasks, the consequences that staffing with student employees might bring, and how the results of the above questions can be understood in relation to the library profession in the academic library. The method used is semistructured interviews, five of which were individual interviews with library management, and one which was a focus group interview with student employees. The interviews are analyzed in relation to earlier research and Andrew Abbotts theory of professions. The result shows that the underlying causes for using students to staff the library is foremost a willingness from the library’s side to offer generous openings hours, in combination with economical aspects. As the amount and character of reference questions are fairly low and don’t require the attention of a librarian, neither library management nor student employees see the work done by the student staff as a threat to the quality of the library’s service. However, the result indicate different views on how the use of student employees might affect the library profession and leads to a discussion concerning whether the work at the information desk is to be seen as part of the profession in academic libraries.

This bachelor thesis in Library and Information science (LIS) aims to examine faculty perceptions of what constitutes and legitimizes an academic library. Academic libraries have experienced immense changes in the last several decades, mainly due to techno­logical advances such as electronic resources, but also the increase in students, teachers and researchers. Many libraries are trying to to provide new services and expertise to remain indispensable to users, which contributes to a fragmented image of academic libraries. This study addressed the following research questions: What are teachers’ and researchers’ expectations of an academic library? How do teachers and researchers think about access and resources? What are teachers’ and researchers’ perceptions of future academic libraries? The study was conducted using a qualitative approach where eight faculty members with experience of being both a teacher and a researcher were interviewed at the Faculty of Health and Society at Malmö University. The data was analyzed using an analytical framework of legitimacy and documentality deriving from Professor Joacim Hansson (2015), but adapted to fit the study. The analytical framework mainly contributed in clarifying which library resources and services can be considered either essential or mostly facilitating. The findings show that faculty perceives the academic library as crucial for their work, especially for giving access to printed or electronic literature, guiding users in how to find and value relevant information, assisting in publishing matters and in education. However, faculty also considers resources and supportive services intrinsically non-essential to teaching and research as relatively important, and truly values the personal contact with the librarians. The results indicate that academic libraries will persist in the foreseeable future, though an informed strategy is necessary.

The object of this essay has been to investigate the interlibrary loan service at the universitylibraries of Borås and Kalmar. For this purpose a quantitative and a qualitative methodhave been used.The main body of information consists of statistic data concerning the incoming interlendingorders for a three-month-period. In order to examine the circumstances under which theinterlending activity exists several interviews were made.The study showed that there are several important factors which together make up the complexitythat governs the interlending activity. What type of demand there is depends on theeducational level, whether the different study programmes have a broad or limited subjectorientation or not, and if the demand is of a constant or an inconstant nature. Well-establishedroutines at the information-desk and co-operation with the departments of the different studyprogrammes are important factors in keeping the knowledge of what books and serials areneeded up to date.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to investigate how the relation between users and librarians is affected by higher education librarians’ talk about information literacy. The thesis uses Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis in analysing four articles written by Swedish higher education librarians and in answering how information literacy, users and librarians are constituted. The analysis indicate that the questions have no distinct answers, there are discrepancies between, as well as within the texts. The results of the analysis are discussed in three different aspects with regards to the implications of them to the purpose of the thesis. What the users need to learn in order to become information literate is constituted either by use of a techno-managerial discourse, with the risk of limiting the way users perceive information and thereby constituting the relation as unequal, or a democratizing discourse, with the possibility of empowering the users by pointing to information as individually and contextually dependent. How the users are to become information literate is influenced in part by a user-centred pedagogical discourse, constituting the users as variably active co-creators in the educational process, thus creating the possibility of a more equal relation. This relation is somewhat hampered by the librarians’ emphasise of their own expertise in the struggle for acceptance as a pedagogic, educating institution. With regards to why the users should become information literate the librarian is at risk of reproducing unequal and ideologically invested structures both within the library and in society at large. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this Master thesis is, from a sociocultural perspective, to investigate the views the teaching librarians at Södertörn University Library (SHB) have on learning, information literacy, and their own pedagogical role, and how their views affect user education and their ideas about the future of user education.The research questions used were: How do the teaching librarians view learning? How is this view reflected in their work with user education? How do the teaching librarians envisage user education in the future, and how do they work to reach that goal?Five semi-structured interviews were conducted with the teaching librarians at SHB. The interviews were then analysed using qualitative content analysis.The results of the study show that the teaching librarians at SHB share a sociocultural view on learning, and take a communicative oriented approach to user education. They believe that communication and interaction support learning, and in the classroom they stimulate discussions both between librarian and student, and between the students themselves. In the future, they hope for improved collaboration between librarians and academic staff, and that user education will become a natural element of the curriculum. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine how students at Högskolan i Borås experience the web-scale discovery service Summon, based on the theoretical model of “The Five Dimensions of Usability”, defined by Whitney Quesenbery. The study aims to answer the following research questions: How do the students execute search assignments in the Summon interface? How intuitive and easy to navigate is the system from a user perspective? What are the students’ opinions about Summon, regarding usability?Five students with varying information seeking skills are asked to perform search assignments during controlled observation, followed by semi-structured interviews. Our findings are presented in the context of previous research and show correspondence with the results of related studies. Our results show that users are comfortable in navigating the Summon interface, but that more user education is desirable for them to be able to fully take advantage of the service provided. / Program: Bibliotekarie

Swedish university libraries traditionally collect recreational readingmaterial only to support the teaching and research interests of theirinstitutions. However many university libraries hold a substantial yetunspecified collection of popular fiction. This thesis investigates theextent of these collections and examines academic librarians' viewsabout students' recreational reading in the academic context and theirattitudes towards the role of fiction and of readers' advisory inacademic libraries. The theoretical framework includes literature andresearch about the benefits of reading for pleasure, collections' rolesand readers' advisory strategies. The empirical material was gatheredthrough quantitative surveys sent to academic librarians in Sweden.The results show that academic librarians are positive about thebenefits of recreational reading for university students. However themajority of them do not believe that it is their responsibility to provideleisure reading material or promote extracurricular reading. Based onthe literature review, on the theoretical framework and on the researchfindings, recommendations are made with respect to further researchand readers' advisory strategies.

The aim of this thesis is to obtain a better understanding and a better knowledge of how librarians in a University College of Applied Sciences cooperate regarding information sharing. Seven librarians were studied by using semi-structured interviews. The analysis has a sociocultural perspective, which means that the informants have been studied as they are part of a social practice; a work practice, in an academic context. The results show that Kemmis’ theory of practice, with three dimensions of the practice, identified as a) cultural-discursive, b) social and c) material-economic, has been a useful tool for presenting a diverse picture of a social practice in this academic context. The interview guide had questions which were formulated in terms of information sharing and cooperation, with these divisions: Formalia, Work, Forms of cooperation, Use of information and Cooperation regarding information sharing in work practice. / <p>Titel på omslaget: Bibliotekarers informasjonsdeling i yrkespraksis : Et kvalitativt studium ved biblioteket på Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus</p><p>Uppsatsen har norsk text.</p>

The foremost aim of this study is clarifying how university libraries in Sweden include visual materials in their work. Moreover, this bachelor thesis examines what kind of support employees of university libraries provide to search for, use and evaluate visual materials in their pedagogics. The theoretical framework for the thesis is based on Hattwig, Bussert, Medaille och Burgess (2013) Visual Literacy Standards model, that explains seven skill areas that librarians can apply in their work with visual materials. In this study, the model was used to identify and analyze how the informants worked with visual materials. For the collection of data, a qualitative method was used. Seven librarians from three different libraries were elected for the interviews. The result showed that the most important part of visual materials for university libraries was related to copyright. Many of the informants emphasized that there is a difference in the expression of text versus images. None of the informants had any kind of special training about visual materials, but they offered material on copyright on their webpage. Most informants suggested that the college libraries responsibility for visual materials was to meet the students where they requested support. Many of the informants said that they did not know if they had sufficient expertise about visual materials to contribute with something to their students. All informants agreed that students today have a greater habit of searching and using images but that they lack knowledge about the use of visual materials in academic work.