Information studies writers from various theoretical perspectives, including feminism and critical race theory, have argued that information classification systems are politically charged artifacts that privilege some types of information while marginalizing others. Although several writers have documented the limitations of classification systems in representing marginalized topics, few have studied how searchers understand, address, and circumvent these limitations. To investigate this question, I conducted a qualitative study of the information seeking behavior of nine disability studies scholars. In semi-structured interviews, I asked faculty members and graduate students about their experiences conducting disability studies research. In this thesis, I discuss three main themes from the interviews: research challenges, search tactics and strategies, and interaction with subject headings. I also discuss the Library of Congress Subject Headings for one book, Eli Clare's Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness and Liberation, as a case study. I situate scholars' experiences in relation to disability studies as a field that is interdisciplinary, relatively new, and concerned with a group that has been socially and economically marginalized. I offer suggestions about how librarians and knowledge organizers can address the needs of researchers in disability studies and other critical interdisciplinary fields. / text

The purpose of the study was to investigate the role of donors in the establishment, implementation and sustainability of donor-funded telecentres in Africa. This was achieved by looking at success factors and reasons of failure at three donor-funded telecentres across three countries on the continent. The projects in question were Nakaseke Telecentre in Uganda, Bhamshela Telecentre in South Africa and the Malawi Rural Telecentre Project (MRTP) which, in the end, was never implemented in Malawi. To achieve the objectives of the study, both secondary and primary sources of data were used. The population of the study consisted of senior officers within the organisations that pledged financial and technical support for the MR TP and those that funded the Bhamshela and Nakaseke Telecentres. However, since there was no response from the donors of the Nakaseke Telecentre, all the data relating to the case was solely sourced from the literature (both print and on-line). Data collected dealt with various aspects of telecentre establishment, implementation and sustainability. The study found that Africa depends heavily on external finance and expertise to establish and implement telecentres due to financial incapacity, lack of expertise and poor infrastructure. The various experiences from the three cases have also demonstrated that donors cannot apply a single model of implementation uniformly across the region due to various political and socio-economic factors existing in different areas of the continent. Finally, the study highlighted the fact that if project sustainability is to be achieved, donors need to constantly improve the training and management component of telecentres. Therefore, rather than trying to draw a standard blueprint for project success, donors need to be ingenious and learn from shared experiences in the field, creatively adapting the solutions that work in one context to others. In conclusion, the findings identified in the present study potentially open up a window for the possibility of future research in terms of the success of donor-funded telecentres in Africa. / Thesis (MIS)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2006.

Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease associated with high levels of glucose (sugar) in the blood. (The three types of diabetes are: Type 1 diabetes which is onset in juveniles and is characterised by deficient insulin production and the patient requires daily administration of insulin; Gestational diabetes is onset and first detected during pregnancy and Type 2 diabetes is typically found in adults who are 40 years and over and results from the body's ineffective use of insulin). Type 2 diabetes is a lifestyle disease that can be prevented and managed by following a particular eating plan, exercising correctly and by the correct administration of medication. With relevant knowledge, lifestyle changes and information, type 2 diabetic patients can improve and manage their condition effectively. Hence information provision is especially important for the management of diabetes. The current study investigated the information needs and information seeking behaviour of adult type 2 diabetic patients at Addington Hospital in Durban. The study was conducted on the patients who attend the Diabetic Clinic at the Hospital. A better understanding of the information needs and information seeking behaviour of diabetic patients can contribute to their successful management of diabetes. Longo's 2010, Health Information Model provided the conceptual framework for the study. The study adopted both a quantitative and qualitative approach. Both methodologies were used to assist in gaining an insight into the research. It was envisaged that the use of both methodologies would enhance and increase the validity and reliability of the data collected. A population of 69 adult patients with a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes were individually interviewed. The healthcare professionals, which included the Medical Officer and four nursing staff at the Diabetic Clinic and the hospital's diabetic Dietician, completed the self-administered questionnaires. The data was entered into a computer and analysed using SPSS. The data was analysed in terms of frequency of results and presented in the form of tables, bar graphs or pie charts. Four themes emerged from the study: (1) Reliance on the diabetic doctor for diabetic education; (2) the active and passive patterns of information seeking; (3) patients' fear of the consequences of diabetes; and (4) the value of the Department of Health's and the Dietician's packaged information. The results of the study indicated that certain factors influenced the patients' decisions about their diabetes self-management. Their current needs influenced their need to seek out information and in most instances they sought this information out from the diabetic doctor. They could not afford the recommended foods for diabetics and besides obtaining their information from the pamphlets and hand-outs provided by the hospital, they obtained their information from traditional mass media. The study concluded that the patients relied heavily on the information provided by the doctor, the dietician and the hand-outs and pamphlets that are available at the clinic. Without an understanding of the effects of information on type 2 diabetes patients, we have an incomplete picture of how information changes the patients' behaviour, which is of primary concern in healthcare information. The study therefore recommended that future research should investigate the effects information has on type 2 diabetes patients and their behaviour. Recommendations that were drawn from the conclusions of the study were that the Diabetic Clinic and Hospital should consider approaching the South African Diabetes Association (SADA) with regard to volunteering their services and facilities to the patients at the hospital. The Clinic should also consider playing a video/dvd recording on diabetes in the patient waiting room. The Diabetic Clinic should also consider inviting a podiatrist to speak to the patients about foot care. / Thesis (M.I.S.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

This thesis reports the findings of an exploratory, ethnographic study of the spiritual journal keeping practices of Catholic university students at the 'Harbour House,' a Catholic student centre and parish operating on the campus of a large, Canadian university. Guided by the question,'How and why do Catholic students keep journals to document their spiritual lives?' it examines journal keeping in the context of Catholic spirituality, the relationships students have with their journals as spiritual documents, and the representations of information found in spiritual journals. Findings are organized under the themes of Content, Materials, Practice, and Structure, and demonstrate that spiritual journal keeping is a deeply personal activity that involves a variety of unique and individualized information practices and behaviours, developed and used in order to better navigate a vast and mysterious spiritual path, and to work towards spiritual growth.

This thesis reports the findings of an exploratory, ethnographic study of the spiritual journal keeping practices of Catholic university students at the 'Harbour House,' a Catholic student centre and parish operating on the campus of a large, Canadian university. Guided by the question,'How and why do Catholic students keep journals to document their spiritual lives?' it examines journal keeping in the context of Catholic spirituality, the relationships students have with their journals as spiritual documents, and the representations of information found in spiritual journals. Findings are organized under the themes of Content, Materials, Practice, and Structure, and demonstrate that spiritual journal keeping is a deeply personal activity that involves a variety of unique and individualized information practices and behaviours, developed and used in order to better navigate a vast and mysterious spiritual path, and to work towards spiritual growth.

This bachelor thesis aims to examine how library staff experience the impact language cafes has on user integration and personal development, as well to study how language cafes can enable meetings between different individuals. Three different issues were to be answered which were a) how language cafes work on libraries, viewed as a social meeting place, b) how do language work with perceived user integration and c) with perceived personal development? Seven different semi structured interviews were conducted and thus six libraries were studied as two of the interviews were conducted on the same library. The library staff all worked in Skåne län and with language cafes. To analyse the results a theory about low-intensive and high-intensive meeting places was used in combination with four different themes: integration, personal development, disagreement and social contact. The theory that was used were created by Ragnar Audunson and is about how a meeting can be with someone who shares their interests or values, thus making it a high-intensive meeting, or someone who doesn’t share the same interests or values, thus making it a low-intensive meeting. The results of this thesis showed that a language cafe does result in both giving a place and reason for people to meet. There were signs of people developing as people, mainly getting more confidence and in the end seeking internship and thus not needing the language cafe anymore. Another conclusion is that the language cafes can be viewed as a high-intensive meeting place, but also a low-intensive, depending on how people look at and interpret it.

This paper examines the way music in libraries is described in the current state cultural policy as laid out mainly in two government bills which form the basis for Swedish cultural policy. By using discourse analysis as its research method, it examines the way music and libraries are described in current cultural policy and the role music libraries are given as a part of this policy. It then looks at the way this discourse is reflected in Swedish libraries by examining the way two state owned cultural institutions treat music in their library activities as stated by them through their publicly accessible policy documents and information given on their web pages. Official cultural policy is compared to how the two institutions speak about their music library work in order to deter-mine whether or not the discourse on music libraries in the examined documents is one and the same. The re-sults of this two-part analysis were compared to a couple of common cultural discourses using a method inspired by discourse analysist Norman Fairclough with the goal of determining whether the discourses on music in cul-tural policy and in the libraries are indicative of or influenced by other common discourses in society.Results showed that there is no explicit policy concerning music libraries in Swedish cultural policy. In so far as the state is willing to actively support music, this involvement is largely concentrated in one single institution, Statens musikverk, which is also one of the two state owned cultural institutions examined in this paper. The goals of this institution as stated both in one of the government bills examined and in their own policy docu-ments are two-fold, and concerns music as a part of the Swedish cultural heritage and the uplifting and support of Swedish musical life. Overall the state is quite reluctant to interfere in the cultural sphere, an attitude which stems from an established tradition in Swedish politics and a Western view of culture and art as an autonomous region in society. There are however certain attitudes towards libraries, music and culture in general present in current cultural policy, one of the more important for this investigation being that libraries and music are treated as belonging to different areas of cultural policy. Where libraries are associated with learning, democratic values and literature, music is treated as part of a group of other expressive or scenic arts such as theatre and dancing.

Hush! – An analyses of the public debate regarding silence in libraries. This essay is based on the perception of a change in the library soundscape. Our purpose is to identify the prevailing discourses in the public debate regarding silence in libraries. To achieve this, we posed three questions. What part does silence play in the public debate about silence in the libraries? What are the discourses that can be identified in this debate?  What is the debater’s opinion of the ambition of the library to become a third space? To answer these questions, we analysed seventeen articles from the Swedish news, by applying a discourse analytic model - based on a model created for this context by Åse Hedemark. The articles were written between 2006 and 2018 and we chose this timeframe due to the fact that the technological development of cellular phones etc, thrived in this period.The results show that there is a discord between the libraries and the participants in the public debate and that a number of discourses have been identified. We have identified the main issue of the debate as the transcendence of the library from a silent temple full of books, to an open space for informal encounters and conversations.

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine how children's librarians work with younger children with language disorders. We want to explore how children's librarians can support and stimulate the language of the children's development and what difficulties they might find. Children with different types of disabilities is a prioritized group according to the Swedish library law but previous studies have shown that children's librarians express an uncertainty in the interactions with children with disabilities. We used qualitative interviews as a data collection method. Five children's librarians who participates in a project called Språklust have been interviewed. In that project the children's librarians work together with speech therapists. Säljö’s sociocultural theory has been used as a theoretical framework. According to Säljö’s concepts, this study shows that cooperation between the children's librarians and other professions helps the children's librarians to reach and work with the children. The children's librarians have an important role when it comes to inspire caregivers to read with their children and to encourage them to talk about the books. One of the difficulties is that the children's librarians are dependent on the speech therapists and it is of importance that the cooperation functions or else there is a risk the children with language disorders will not come to the libraries.

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.