At the beginning of summer each year, a vast number of school children all over our land are released for two months or more to enjoy a period of leisure. With the steady growth of cities, it has become a problem in many large urban districts to care for these children, especially the adolescents who find it a perplexing problem to know how to spend their leisure time.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries. The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory. The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups. The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity. The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful. The study also shows that an integration of new media in the school and in the library is necessary if children's reading skills are to be improved.

Skillnader i uppdrag och mål kan orsaka spänningar i samarbetet mellan folkbibliotek och skola. I skolor som dessutom saknar eget skolbibliotek kan den problematiken öka ytterligare då skolan är i behov av skolbibliotekstjänster vilka inte ingår i folkbibliotekets uppdrag. Samtidigt kan ett samarbete med skolorna bidra med många fördelar för folkbibliotekets läsfrämjande arbete. Den här studien ämnar undersöka hur folkbibliotekarier förhåller sig till sitt läsfrämjande uppdrag gentemot barn och unga i samarbete med skolor med bristande skolbiblioteksverksamhet. För undersökningen genomfördes en kvalitativ intervjustudie med ett urval av fyra folkbibliotekarier. Resultatet har analyserats utifrån Hultbergs teori om läsfrämjande strategier. Sammanfattningsvis visar resultatet av undersökningen att folkbibliotekarierna främst förhåller sig till samarbeten med skolor med bristande skolbiblioteksverksamhet utifrån ett eget intresse för det egna läsfrämjande uppdraget. Studien kommer också fram till att de spänningar som folkbibliotekarierna upplever i samarbetet med skolorna beror på bristen av valfrihet, frågan om att kompensera för den bristande skolbiblioteksverksamheten samt missförstånd om vad folkbiblioteket kan erbjuda skolorna. / Differences in missions between public libraries and schools can cause tension while cooperating. For public libraries to cooperate with schools with deficient school libraries can be even more problematic, when the school is in need of school library services that is not a part of the public library mission. Meanwhile, a cooperation between public libraries and school can have several advantages for the public libraries in their mission of reading promotion. This study aims to examine how public librarians relate to their work with reading promotion towards children and young adults in collaborations with schools that have deficient school libraries. Qualitative interviews were carried out with a selection of four public librarians. The results were analysed in comparison to Hultbergs theory of strategies for reading promotion. In conclusion, the results of the study show that mainly relate to the cooperation with schools with deficient school libraries in terms of a self-interest for their reading promoting mission. The study also shows that the tension in cooperating with schools with deficient school libraries, as lived by the public librarians, is caused by a lack of freedom of choice, the question of compensating for the deficient school libraries and a misunderstanding of the public library mission.

<p>The aim of this two years master's thesis is to examine public librarians’ views of their pedagogical role towards school children, and to illustrate the relationship between public libraries and schools as a background for the role of the public librarians. The theoretical framework is Carol Cullier Kuhlthau’s theory of the roles of librarians as mediators in reference work (Levels of Mediation) and in education (Levels of Education). The main question of the study is: How do public librarians view their pedagogical role towards elementary school pupils and high school students? Related questions regarding the use of the public library for school purposes, the communication and cooperation between the public library and the schools, the difference between public libraries and school libraries and the librarians’ view of pedagogical work are also made.</p><p>The method used is qualitative interviews. These are made with seven public librarians from different libraries in different communities. The study shows that the librarians are aware of their pedagogical role towards school children, but still the role is unclear and difficult to distinguish from the roles of other formal mediators such as school librarians and teachers. The study also shows that a number of conditions, such as the organization of the schools’ library use and the communication and cooperation with the schools affect the pedagogical role of the librarians. They are also affected by the traditional role of the public librarian, which is to be at the user´s service rather than working as a counselor. However, the public librarians in this study believe that the ideal way to work with school children is to support their learning process.</p>

The aim of this two years master's thesis is to examine public librarians’ views of their pedagogical role towards school children, and to illustrate the relationship between public libraries and schools as a background for the role of the public librarians. The theoretical framework is Carol Cullier Kuhlthau’s theory of the roles of librarians as mediators in reference work (Levels of Mediation) and in education (Levels of Education). The main question of the study is: How do public librarians view their pedagogical role towards elementary school pupils and high school students? Related questions regarding the use of the public library for school purposes, the communication and cooperation between the public library and the schools, the difference between public libraries and school libraries and the librarians’ view of pedagogical work are also made. The method used is qualitative interviews. These are made with seven public librarians from different libraries in different communities. The study shows that the librarians are aware of their pedagogical role towards school children, but still the role is unclear and difficult to distinguish from the roles of other formal mediators such as school librarians and teachers. The study also shows that a number of conditions, such as the organization of the schools’ library use and the communication and cooperation with the schools affect the pedagogical role of the librarians. They are also affected by the traditional role of the public librarian, which is to be at the user´s service rather than working as a counselor. However, the public librarians in this study believe that the ideal way to work with school children is to support their learning process.

Fewer than 8% of schools in South Africa have functioning libraries. There is no national policy for school libraries which compels School Governing Bodies and principals to have a library in their schools. This qualitative study, based on grounded theory, investigated ten primary schools in Gauteng that had libraries, or were in the process of setting up a library with the intention of providing a rich description of the issues and challenges facing these schools. The schools were chosen on the basis of location (Soweto and Johannesburg), and the school fees that were paid in a continuum from low/no fee paying schools to the fee paying ex Model-C schools. The resourcing of the school library, the operation of the school library and the role of the library were examined. The findings highlight the lack of a national policy, of school library posts, the theft of computers as a result of the lack of security, as well as the lack of understanding by teachers of the role the library in teaching and learning. Furthermore, there appears to be a disjuncture between the trends evident in the international literature on school libraries and what is actually happening in the primary school libraries in my study. Most significantly low/no fee paying schools with libraries were the exception and those that did have libraries were as a result of the enthusiasm and efforts of one or two individuals with the backing of the principal. Ex-Model C schools had the advantage in terms of the provision and staffing of school libraries as they had the funds to support them and, in some cases, a school librarian, provided that the principal supported the idea of a school library. In all the schools, the belief in the importance of the library regarding reading and literacy was the main motivating factor in establishing or maintaining the school library. A growing public awareness of the value of school libraries was an encouraging trend that emerged from my study.

Introduction. The aim of this thesis is to investigate how librarians in public libraries, school libraries and integ-rated libraries relate to reading for pleasure in regards to reading for development in their work with students. A conflict has been shown between promoting voluntary reading and promoting reading ability. We base our re-sults in Qvortrups theory about children as “beings” or “becomings” together with Junckers theory about the distinction between the cultures of the educational sector and the cultural sector. Method. We conducted a qualitative interview study with seven sources from the three library types. We also conducted a quantitative survey study with vignettes taken from the qualitative analysis. Analysis. The qualitative result was analysed with a conventional content analysis. We conducted three inde-pendent one way anovas to investigate if there were any differences between the library types in the survey. Results. The qualitative study showed that all sources highly valued reading for pleasure and the students right to choose literature. The school librarians more often related their work to improving reading ability and to school criteria than librarians from the other two library types. We found similar tendencies in the results from the survey sample but none of these was significant with a significance level of p &lt; 0.05. Conclusion. Librarians from all types of libraries show a reasoning consistent with the view of children as “beings” and the culture from the cultural sector. School librarians in our results do more often than the other two library types show a view of children as “becomings” consistent with the culture from the educational sector. Therefore we would argue that it is important to watch the development with strengthened school lib-raries so that the view of children as “becomings” does not become the only perspective dominating children's daily lives. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2006 / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-207).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 2006 / Includes bibliographical references (p. 184-207). Also available on the Internet.

This two years master's thesis examines the experience of children who read to a dog. The theoretical framework is inspired by sociocultural theory developed by Roger Säljö and the concept carnival inspired by Mikhail Bakhtin. The sociocultural theory has been chosen because it emphasizes the role of practice, instruments and communication in learning and the concept carnival has been chosen to analyze the experience of reading to a dog. The method used is qualitative interview and observation. A total of eight interviews and two observations when children read to a dog have been collected. One interview is with a teacher and seven interviews are with the children (six children participated and one child was interviewed twice). The method of analysis is a process in three stages where the first stage is to explore what the children say, the next stage examines the meaning of what is being said and the third stage understands it in relation to the theoretical framework and prior done research. Important results are that most of the children participating in this thesis have a positive experience of reading to a dog. The children read to a dog in different rooms, at different times and the children read to several dogs. The instrument used was fiction books. Since the purpose was to read only to the dogs the role of the teacher who was in the room during the sessions was described by the children as passive. The observations showed a more active role where the teacher helped the children with difficult words. Most children pet the dog while reading and they gave the dog a treat afterwards. The discussion of this thesis focuses on the role of the libraries. It also gives examples on how to develop reading to dogs and what studies can be done in the future. For the program to evolve more literacy activities can be incorporated and the role of the adult and the dog can be more active. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.