When circumstances for university libraries changed drastically due to the covid-19 pandemic in 2020, video mediated reference service was used to maintain availability for library users. Many libraries used Zoom for this service. This thesis aims to investigate librarians' reference work via video calls, through a case study of a university library in Sweden. The study gathers librarians' experiences of communicating with users via Zoom, to gain knowledge about the work's characteristics and to discover possible strategies for managing video call services, and their inherent strengths and weaknesses, in a university library context. The study is based on six semi-structured interviews with university librarians who work at the Zoom desk. All respondents have many years of experience of working at a traditional reference desk, which enables valuable comparisons between the two working methods. The results reveal several advantages of Zoom, one of the biggest being the separate and undisturbed space that the Zoom desk represents. As a result of that, the respondents point out that Zoom has come to be used for in-depth reference service. By analyzing the interviews through the sociologist Erving Goffman’s theoretical framework of social interaction, and theories of social presence, we also hope to increase the understanding of the dynamics in video mediated communication.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the design of the reference service and its development that Internet has caused in college/university libraries when it comes to the service provided to the user. I want to examine the quality of this development from the view of the librarians, and also investigate their attitude and how they deal with this development.The following questions were asked:•How has Internet changed the reference service at college/university libraries?•How do the librarians look upon the possible change of quality in the reference service when the Internet is involved?•What attitude do the librarians hold toward this development where Internet is used in the reference service and how do they deal with it?The method used was qualitative interviews. A total of six librarians from Blekinge tekniska högskola, Halmstad högskola, Lunds universitet and Växjö universitet have been interviewed.The theories and models used were “media richness”, a quality framework including “quality aspects of a service”, and social psychology and its “reasons for a positive/negative attitude on an organisations change”.The result shows that Internet has brought more sources of information and additional ways to contact the library. It also shows a change in “how” and “where” the search is conducted. Furthermore the study indicates that the quality of service was not affected by Internet and that the librarians were positive towards the change and handled with it through education and “technical support” among other things. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this thesis is to investigate new knowledge about how children search for library material and which strategies they use, and if the latest research gives any answers whether we should adapt systems and services or teach information seeking in a better way. In this thesis knowledge is understood as research publications but also results from projects in library practise, and studies concerning children 6 to 18 years old are included. The method used is a knowledge survey. We have gathered and evaluated documentation from different sources like citation and reference databases within the field of library and information science. The result implicates that there are, both in old and new documentation, three main search strategies children use in their search for information in a library context; they browse, they search in library catalogues and they use some sort of reference service. There is however no clear paradigm amongst researchers of the best way to help children find what they seek. What can be seen is that a method appreciated by many researchers today, is to engage the children themselves in the development of services and systems. To have an interdisciplinary approach is also valuable, and many things can be learned from disciplines other than library and information science when it comes to knowledge about children and their search behaviour and needs. / Program: Bibliotekarie