The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine and describe dog breeders’ information activities. Questions posed in this study are:• What are the information needs of dog breeders?• How does the dog breeder seek and use information?• How can the relationship between serious leisure and information activities be described?The theoretical framework consists of the sociologist Robert A Stebbins’ theory about serious leisure. The study is based on a qualitative methodology. Nine dog breeders of nine different breeds have been interviewed and the interviews have been transcribed and analyzed. The analysis has been conducted with a model for information use and its effects, formulated by Lars Höglund. When analyzing the information sources an additional model has been used; also formulated by Lars Höglund, and Olle Persson. The results show that the main information needs of dog breeders concern health, pedigree, mentality, hunting ability and the history of the breed. Information sources preferred are the Internet and personal contacts. Magazines and books are also used but not as frequently as the other two sources. Another finding is that the breeders do not use the public library as often as they did before the arrival of the Internet. The nine breeders organize their information about their breeding activities in a similar way, using files and folders. The connection between dog breeding as serious leisure and information activities appears to be very strong. The information activities are to be seen as one of the prerequisites for dog breeding. The results also indicate that the Swedish Kennel Club that organizes the breeders plays a very important role as information mediator.

The main purpose of this thesis is to examine upper secondary school teachers’ views of their students’ information seeking practices and their perspectives on consider the concept of information literary. The theoretical framework consists of a sociocultural perspective and the empirical material has been collected through interviews with six upper secondary school teachers. The material is analyzed phenomenographically and revealed three practices. Social science teachers consider the library and librarian to be valuable resources for students’ information seeking, particularly in view of information overload in society today. Thereby information literacy is seen as controlling information and constructing knowledge. In the natural sciences the teachers also see the library and librarians’ role as important, but information seeking as an object of teaching is not on their personal teaching agenda. Information literacy is viewed in a process, problem-solving way. The technology teachers do not consider information seeking as an important aspect of their teaching. Information literacy is seen as locating and using sources for practical use and thereby extending the students knowledge. This thesis established that the subjects taught influence ways of looking at knowledge and learning, and that pedagogical methods influence the teachers’ way of understanding information seeking and information literacy. Further, the teachers’ own university studies influences their values, in particular, the period of time when they carried out their studies. The contradiction in terms of the lack of interest among technology teachers in information seeking skills yet seeing information literacy as knowledge extension, reveals a sociotechnical view of information literacy.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of how elderly people seek and use information in everyday situations. A further aim is to suggest ways for the library to offer more services specifically tailored for pensioners. This is an important topic as pensioners are a rapidly growing group of library users. We conducted qualitative interviews with four elderly people concerning their information needs in everyday life, and discovered that they rarely use the library, preferring instead to get their information from various internet sites and their pensioners’ organisation. The interviews were analysed with the help of Anderson and Skot-Hansen’s model of library use. We suggest that libraries work more closely with pensioners’ organisations, thus allowing elderly people more options for information seeking, as well as greater access to library services and resources.

The purpose of this thesis is to reach a deeper understanding of the context of teachers’ information seeking. Research in the role of the library in a learning perspective is in demand. To reach our aim we investigate what teachers say about their experiences of the user training during their studies and what effect it had on their information seeking as teachers. We interviewed four teachers and analyzed the transcripts of their sayings about their experiences of their information seeking during their education and a teaching profession. The theoretical framework includes information needs, information seeking foundations and communities of practice. The main outcome of the study is that user training made our informants familiar with information seeking and information resources. User training had a positive effect in their professional role, even though it was intended to serve their educational needs. Information seeking is a significant aspect of a teaching profession, and our conclusion is that user training also can be developed to include professional needs.

The aim of this thesis is to gain a deeper understanding of howsocial contacts can serve as information sources for pregnantwomen. Furthermore, we wanted to examine how women’scontext influences their information seeking and the barriers thatcan occur during information seeking. The theoretical frameworkis founded on Tom Wilson's model of information needs as contextdependent, and Pamela J. McKenzie's model of informationpractices in accounts of everyday-life information seeking. Inorder to answer our questions, eight qualitative interviews withpregnant women were conducted. Four were expecting their firstchild and the other four were pregnant for the second time. Theempirical material was compared and divided into nine categories.By analyzing their context and statements about their informationseeking, we could demonstrate how parts of their context affecttheir information seeking and what women usually do when theyuse social contacts as an information source. The results show thatmost women use people who have personal experience ofpregnancy as information source. Information is mainly sought byactively seeking or getting information by proxy from their socialcontacts. They were interested in knowing how other women hadexperienced pregnancy. The women in this study wanted to knowmore about how other women felt, rather than to seek medicalfacts. Furthermore, we found several barriers that preventedwomen from seeking information, such as lack of useful socialcontacts and time. In addition, the issue is a sensitive and apersonal topic, and personal and cultural differences were alsomentioned. / 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

The aim of this thesis is to examine Social science teachers infor-mation seeking in their professional role.The focus in this study has been on what sources the teachers use for information seeking, examine and analyze their information practices and how they state their reasons for using different in-formation sources, and finally how these teachers experience con-ditions related to information seeking and how these conditions in-fluence their information seeking.This study is based on four semi structured qualitative interviews. The empirical material from the interviews has been compared to earlier relevant research and analyzed with a theoretical frame-work, which includes conceptions from a sociocultural perspec-tive, a matrix over different kinds of information sources devel-oped by Höglund och Persson and McKenzie’s model of infor-mation practices.The results of this study are:- These teachers use both formal and informal sources and external and internal sources. Digital sources are important and these have consequently been added to Höglund och Persson’s original matrix from 1985.- Information practices tend to overlap each other, for example ac-tive seeking (more specific and prepared information seeking) and active scanning (less specific), which are the two most common information practices among the teachers. Lack of time, accessibil-ity and private practices are examples for using or not using infor-mation sources.- Claims to be up to date, attitudes towards school library, aspects related to criticism of the sources, “information overload”, col-leagues and available resources are some conditions that influence the interviewed teachers’ information seeking in their professional role. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The purpose of this thesis is to examine young people’s information needs whenthey are deciding on what upper secondary education to choose, why they usedInternet to find the information, and how they experienced their informationseeking. A qualitative study was made using interviews. The study’s respondentsconsisted of young people who are soon to be leaving elementary school, andyoung people who have just started their upper secondary education. Thetheoretical framework that was used to analyse the results of the study consisted oftheories and models regarding information needs and information seeking. Theresults of the study shows that, initially, the Internet does not seem to have asignificant role in the search for information. Rather, it was used at the end of thesearch, when they had decided which course of upper secondary education theywere interested in. The study respondents used schools' websites almostexclusively to find the information needed. They were interested mainly ininformation about the upper secondary program of their choice, and photos of theschool. They were very content in using the Internet to get information beforedeciding on which school to choose. They thought that it was simple to use, andthat it was accessible. It appeared, however, that although they were satisfied withthe Internet as information source they did not always understand the informationthat they found; nor were they interested in more or new information that couldaffect their decisions. / Program: Bibliotekarie

In this bachelor thesis the aim is to explore how university libraries and researchers function together. I will do this through interviews with phd students and examine how they reason on the use of libraries and other resources available in campus and witch other methods they use to gather information. The graduate students differ in where they are with their research process, but all of them work in the field of social sciences. To help me in my analysis I have adopted Wilsons model of information behaviour and modify this to better suit my purpose. My findings show that they mainly use the library to access materials and avoid use of the librarians, due to perception of low usefulness. Also they rely on their own knowledge of information gathering. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The aim of this master thesis is to examine information seeking andinformation use among high school pupils in two Norwegian highschools. The main research question focuses on different kinds ofinteraction or lack of interaction in the pupils’ information seeking andinformation use.The theoretical framework of the thesis is based on a socioculturalperspective which allows for a specific focus of various forms ofinteraction. I investigate interaction in relation to concepts such associal practices, previous experiences and meaning making. Theempirical material consists of data from a large scale questionnaire (n=217) and in-depth interviews with six pupils.The results show that these pupils are used to interact with digital tools.The pupils trust printed sources more than digital ones, but at the sametime they prefer digital sources since these are easier to handle, it isquicker to locate information and this is easier to understand. However,there is a lack of interaction when it comes to a more creative use of theInternet and digital tools, at least within school practices. It seems thesepupils are not used to interact with information for purposes other thanfinding the correct answer. That is, they seek information on theInternet and they use this for school assignments without any furtherdiscussions. They do not engage in source criticism. They interact withteachers, parents and friends but mostly in an instrumental way. Fewpupils turn to the library to get help with information seeking. Yet, theresults also show that the pupils are in fact information literate inrelation to school practices and their curriculum. / Program: Bibliotekarie