The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to study how university teachers look upon information literacy, what they consider the professional role of the academic librarian and how they value cooperation between the two professions. The methodology is based on qualitative interviews and is inspired by phenomenography. A limited number of qualitative interviews has been carried out in order to describe the attitudes and opinions of the university teachers related to my issue. I have also used the results of two theoreticians, Monica Hansen and Berth Danermark, who have studied cooperation between different professional groups. Since it is two different professional groups which meet in a situation of cooperation, I have also chosen to investigate “the faculty culture” where the point of departure has been the research of Larry Hardesty. One result of my study is that all the teachers have a similar conception of information literacy. All the respondents mention the ability to retrieve, evaluate and use effectively the information needed and they also mention the criticism of the sources as important elements in the concept of information literacy. My research also shows that all the teachers have a positive opinion of cooperation between librarians and university teachers. As favourable factors in a collaborative situation the teachers mention personal contacts and common goals. As negative factors the respondents point out lack of time, insufficient marketing, economic cutbacks, digitalization, conservatism and individualism. Some teachers also point out that it is two different professional cultures that meet and a cultural clash could then occur. The results of the study also show that teachers have confidence in the professional abilities of librarians, but, which all my respondents emphasize, their personal qualities are equally important. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of the present thesis is to examine discourses about teaching information seeking in upper secondary school teachers. The main questions are: (1) What different interpretative repertoires can be identified among teachers talking about teaching information seeking in relation to students’ problem-based tasks? (2) How are these repertoires constructed and what functions can be observed? The theoretical framework is discursive psychology. Two teacher teams from two different upper secondary schools in the Gothenburg area participated in focus group interviews. Group A consisted of four teachers from the Individual Programme and group B of seven teachers from the Social Science Programme. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. The main focus of the analysis was on discerning interpretative repertoires, subject positioning among teachers, the presence of various ideological dilemmas in the talk and rhetorical aspects used by the teachers. Five different interpretative repertoires were identified; the Information repertoire, the Source repertoire, the Behavioural repertoire, the Process repertoire and the Communicative repertoire. Moreover, each repertoire consists of different ways of talking about teaching information seeking. Throughout the discussions, two recurring aspects emerge that govern the teachers’ way of talking about teaching information seeking; the students’ ability and the organisation of the school. The ideological dilemmas that appear in the talk deal with the teacher role, different views on the quality of information sources and the teaching of evaluation of information sources. Other dilemmas include the judgement of students’ work and how to handle plagiarism. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this Master’s thesis studies is to examine how information seeking is taught from a pedagogical and didactic perspective. The questions at issue are:• What is the content in information seeking education?• What aims are focused in information seeking education?• What methods are used in information seeking education? The methods being used are empirical studies and studies of literature, within the subject area. The study is inspired by phenomenographical learning theories. Through eight qualitative interviews we have examined how the respondents describe the content, the aims and the methods in their information seeking education. These interviews have been taped, transcribed and categorized. Our theoretical framework is based on pedagogic theories of knowledge and a didactic theory. To subsequently clarify the dynamic relation between these a pedagogical triangle of practice were used. This essay points out that the information seeking educations are reflected in a pedagogical and didactic perspective to some extent only. Our study shows that all our respondents are well aware of many of the students’ difficulties in the information seeking process and there is a discrepancy between this awareness and the measures taken in the teaching. According to the authors of this essay, the school librarian work would be facilitated if they have knowledge in pedagogical and didactic theory and that teachers ought to make information seeking to an explicit learning object where their knowledge of pedagogical and didactic theory are used. / Uppsatsnivå: D

This position paper deals with the notions of learning and literacy in the context of studying Library and Information Science (LIS). More particularly, it addresses the learning and literacy involved in, and manifested by, its own production. It is about writing this particular master’s thesis in LIS – the persons involved, the forms and terms used, the expectations met or ignored. It converses not only with itself but also with the academic system which is its raison d’être. It is maintained that this conversing is inherently tangled and that the irresolvable disorder is literally glossed over via language. The argument relies largely on linguistic analysis, linking discourse and conceptual levels to their etymological foundations. Elements of action research and autoethnography are used in an attempt to capture and communicate the competitive conversing which propels and frustrates both personal learning and the development of a disciplined thesis. Standardized presentation forms are challenged and modified in order to highlight the underlying, and ongoing, interplay rather than the finished product. It is suggested that this tangled, tentative, personal/institutional conversing characterizes not only learning but also libraries and LIS itself. It is further suggested that literacy of whatever variety remains a matter of reading, of being able to continuously and competitively assess, converse and thereby commune. LIS has good reasons to highlight its inherent, transdisciplinary association with the human capacity to read. The paper includes a critical self-assessment and concludes with a presentation of the quantitative and qualitative data generated by its own production. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to investigate a few economy students’ perceptions of user education connected to essay work, focusing on aspects of information literacy of importance to the studies and the role of the user education in this context. The study was conducted with a qualitative approach. Five economy students were interviewed regarding their experiences of working with information, their perceptions of user education and its impact on their essay work. The interviews were transcribed and analysed with Bruce’s (1997) relational model of information literacy. The results show that the user education focused mainly on presenting various electronic databases and how to use them effectively. This is consistent with the first two of Bruce’s conceptions of information literacy. The areas in which the students experienced difficulties during the process of seeking and using information were in part corresponding to the user education and the students generally found the education to be helpful to their studies. However, within some areas of difficulty the students received no instruction, neither through the user education nor through the teachers in their subject field. These areas concern strategies for performing critical analysis of sources and enhancing the essays reliability, and are consistent with the third and the fifth conceptions of information literacy, concerning the information process and knowledge construction. To increase the awareness of information literacy as a complex concept and facilitate the students’ work, it should be included in the main education to a greater extent, and not be limited to the library’s courses. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this master thesis is to study how teachers in adult education view the phenomenon of information seeking in education. We have interviewed adult education teachers, and the method used when working with the data was phenomenography. We found three categories in our material: 1. Information seeking is the student’s responsibility; 2. Information seeking is the responsibility of the library; 3. Information seeking is the teacher’s responsibility. Views expressed in the interviews were e.g. the importance of the librarian, and also that the information seeking was not important itself, but rather how the students used the information found. Since the students are adults, teachers expect them to be able to find information, i.e. the teachers did not find it necessary to teach about information seeking. This despite the fact that adult students often had little education, or had failed previous studies. The conclusion of our study is that the teachers want to work with the librarians, but they have a very limited view of how to do this. The lack of time is another aspect mentioned to why there is such poor interaction between the professions. We see a need to discuss who is responsible for information seeking in adult education; is it the student’s, teacher’s or the librarian’s responsibility? It is important as well, to discuss what is considered to be significant when it comes to information seeking, as well as what it means to be information competent. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine the importance of the hospital library for nurses´ information literacy. The hospital library can play a key role for nurses interested in evidence-based approaches to their work. Two main research questions are posed: In what ways does the hospital library work to support nurses´ information literacy? How do nurses view the hospital library as an information resource? To address these questions three hospital librarians and three nurses are interviewed using semi-structured interviews. Christine Bruce’s Seven faces of information literacy were used in the analysis to examine varying experiences of information literacy. The results show that the most important categories relation to information literacy are; information technology, information sources, information process and information control. What seems to be of great significance for the nurses is the possibility to use the hospital librarians as a resource. Their competence is regarded as invaluable and of significant importance to nurses that are library users. Context also seems to be important for information seeking processes. The hospital library seems to be more important for nurses when they are doing research or studying, than in the context of clinical work.

In this Master thesis interest is directed towards approaches toinformation literacy (IL) and critical thinking in the educationalactivities of university libraries. The aspiration of universitylibrarians to promote the critical abilities of students isproblematized. At the center of attention is the project“Lärandemål för informationskompetens” [Learning outcomes forinformation literacy], which in 2006 was carried out incollaboration between the Swedish university libraries, in responseto the educational reforms connected to the Bologna Process.Through the discourse analytical framework of NormanFairclough, documents related to the project “Lärandemål förinformationskompetens” are studied in order to identifydominating approaches to IL. The purpose is to investigate anddiscuss the possible implications of the dominating perspectives,with regard to the development of critical thinking amongstudents.The study results in the identification of two main discourses, thestandardization discourse and the discourse on employability. Bothof these discourses are seen to be connected to two overarchingdiscourses also identified in the study, the market discourse andthe discourse on information overflow.In conclusion, it was found that the objectivist and positivistepistemology underlying the dominating perspectives, in severalrespects is counterproductive to the aspiration to promote criticalthinking among students. A social constructionist approach issuggested as an alternative. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this Master’s thesis is to examine and understand how teachers of younger children view the concept of critical evaluation of information and how their interpretations of the concept relate to their teaching. The need for the development of children’s ability to critically evaluate has been emphasized through research as well as the need for collaboration between teachers and librarians in order to help pupil’s process information into knowledgeThe study has a socio-cultural perspective and the material was collected through observations and qualitative interviews with teachers. The results of the study indicate that many teachers experience uncertainty when it comes to the area of critical evaluation and that they do not teach the subject to any substantial extent. Although there is a new curriculum which clearly raises the question, the issue of critical evaluation is paid comparatively little attention by the teachers. There are, however, teachers who express an interest in the subject. Generally, the teachers think of the critical evaluation of a source as a way to decide what to believe, but other aspects can be distinguished. Some speak about critical evaluation as attitude towards information. A potential way of incorporating critical evaluation into teaching is, according to the teachers, to have a continuing dialogue around the subject with the children.It is likely that teachers need further education within the area of critical evaluation in order for a method development to take place. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to study howuniversity librarians in a South African context relate to theconcept of information literacy. We investigated differencesand similarities in approaches to user education andinformation literacy. We have based our study on thefollowing research questions: What are the prerequisites foruser education at the University of the Western Cape? Howdo these prerequisites influence librarians' approaches toinformation literacy and user education at the University ofthe Western Cape? We have used a sociocultural theoreticalperspective and Hofstede's cultural dimensions in orderto pay particular attention to the cultural and social contextof user education. Six semi-structured qualitative interviewswithin the context of a two-week field study were carriedout with nine librarians.In the analysis several factors emerged which in interactioninfluenced user education: the students' qualifications, thelibrarians’ collaboration with teachers and the librarians’approach to information literacy and user education. Theresult shows that although the librarians at the University ofthe Western Cape are aware of different theoreticalperspectives on information literacy the social context inparticular influences their focus in user education. Ourconclusion is that information literacy must be understood inthe light of social and cultural practices, while at the sametime keeping pace with the effects of increasingglobalization and internationalization in higher education. / Program: Bibliotekarie