The aim of this thesis is to understand and describe the ways in which information literacy is expressed in the work of schoollibrarians. Information literacy is seen as an understanding of how information is sought and used within a social setting. Research questions guiding this endeavour are: 1. In what ways do school librarians seek and use information? 2. How can the information literacy of school librarians be described based on their information practices? In order to shed light on the social setting that constitutes the work of school librarians, practice theory and a sociocultural perspective on information literacy is used as a theoretical framework. Empirical data were produced by way of five semistructured interviews with active school librarians. These interviews were analysed thematically. The findings point toward information seeking and use in school library work being integrated information activities taking place in relation to the performance of work tasks, as well as being a highly social activity. Information literacy is described as enacted in the performance of these information activities. It is also understood as expressed on multiple levels, from being informed about current events in the world and within the school, to understanding how this may effect the day to day performance of work tasks.

The aim of this study is to explore and deepen the knowledge about how school librarians work to promote reading and how it is experienced and described by boys in grade five. Through semi-structured interviews with six students and three school librarians, both perspectives of reading promotion work were examined. For this study I used Chambers (2011) theory about the circle of reading. Collected empirical data was analyzed through qualitative content analysis. The results of the study showed that boys do not perceive the reading promotion work to the same extent as the school librarians describe how they work to promote reading.

The aim of this study is to examine how school librarians work to solve the problems that occur in their reading promotion efforts. The problems they encounter include boys who have less interest in reading and worse reading comprehension than girls, children whose native language is not Swedish, and people who do not have a general interest in reading. Furthermore, the purpose with this study is to find ways to assist school librarians in their work and to enhance students' reading comprehension.The method used for this study involved conducting semi-structured interviews with seven school librarians. The theoretical framework used to analyze the empirical data was the sociocultural theory developed by Vygotskij. According to this theory, learning occurs in social contexts. Important key words for the theory are culture, social interactions, physical and intellectual tools and language. In summary, the result of this study demonstrates that the more negative perception of reading among boys compared to girls, leading to lower reading comprehension, is a societal issue that the school librarians cannot completely mitigate. The findings also indicate that school librarians build friendly relationships with students to effectively convey their opinions about reading. Through this strategy, school librarians create a relaxed and secure atmosphere in the school library to encourage more student visits. School librarians inquire about students´ hobbies and interests to help them discover books that align with their preferences.

This paper conducts a qualitative examination based on interviews with four high school librarians. The purpose is to illustrate their professional role in proportion to that of the teachers from working with students’ reading comprehension and from their role, if any, in the school’s educational activity. The work is based on the following questions:- How does the high school librarian describe his or her work to increase the students' reading comprehension and contribute to their reading development?- How does the high school librarian describe his or her involvement in the schools’ educational activity?- How can one understand the high school librarians' relation to the teachers with reference to the librarians’ jurisdiction and the formal and actual legitimacy of the school library profession?The theoretical framework constitutes of the concept of jurisdiction and of formal and actual legitimacy. The result of this study showed that all four librarians strive for an emancipatory working method. It also showed that some of the school librarians find it difficult to be part of the educational activity, while others state that they have a welldeveloped cooperation. The lack of cooperation may be due to lack of time and a stressful working climate. As regards to the relations between the librarian and the teachers, the study showed that the librarians have both formal and actual legitimacy, although to different extents. A lower extent of actual legitimacy, for example, may result in lesser degree of involvement in the educational activity. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to examine how pupils with Swedish as a second language and school librarians perceive the concept of pleasure of reading and the feeling of being a part of society. Our research is based on qualitative interviews with eight students in grades 6-9 and from two different schools. We have also interviewed two school librarians in these two libraries. As a method of analysis, we used phenomenography because it is the informants' perceptions of the phenomenon of pleasure of reading that we investigate. The results of empirical data and analysis in this paper demonstrated that the methods used to create pleasure of reading is similar regardless of whether the pleasure of reading is to be created in the mother tongue or second language. The other end of the state which is found in the essay and empirical analysis is that the experience of alienation or the feeling of being a part of society is primarily created by the situation and environment in which individuals find themselves in, and secondly by who defines the term. / Program: Bibliotekarie

Different educational and professional backgrounds play important roles in how school librarians prioritize activities in the school library. Whether the school librarian has a background as a teacher or as a librarian, they influence and apprehend the activities of the school library differently. The aim of this thesis is to find out how the school librarian looks at his/her commission. What shifts in priorities can be recognized depending on whether the librarian has training as a teacher or a librarian. This thesis also analyzes how the two different professional backgrounds justify their priorities in the school library. I have used Henri Tajfel’s theory of social identity as a theoretical frame work to analyze my data. My empirical data consists of four qualitative interviews and observations of award winning school librarians with different professional backgrounds; the librarians have all won the Swedish award ‘School Librarian of the Year’. The activities I observed during my field work are presented as categories in my study. I’ve used the American scholar David Loertscher’s taxonomy of school library activities to identify those categories. I then used a didactical approach to better understand the categorical data, asking the questions “What? How? And Why?” Some of my findings recognize differences between the two professional identities. A professional background in teaching tends to stress e.g. grading pupils reading abilities, whereas the trained librarian focuses more on reading for recreational purposes. My findings point out that explicit partisanship plays a major role concerning professional identity, which in the end reflects priorities in school library activities. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The aim of this study is about how school librarians useweblogs as a working tool. I wanted to examine how someschool librarians use weblogs as a working tool and why theyare using them. I also wanted to know the advantages anddisadvantages they see with this tool. I believe that children andteenagers are interested in social media- tools and also are bigusers and consumers of these tools. Therefore I thought it mightbe interesting to examine how school librarians who havechildren and young people as their main target group, work withweblogs which is one of many social media tools.The methodology used for this study is interviews. I didthree face-to-face interviews and two interviews by sending theinterview guide with questions to the participants. The interviewguide was sent by e-mail as a wordfile-document. The answerswere written by the participants directly in the word-documentand then sent back to me in the same way. Farkas (2007) dividethe use of weblogs into different kinds of blogs. I used thisdivision to present and analyze my result.The conclusions of this study are that school librarians useweblogs as News Blogs, Readers’ advisory blogs, Book Clubblogs, Marketing blogs, Blogs to build community, Blogs tosupplement workshops and as reference blogs. They useweblogs as a working tool to inform, to market the library, toreach out to their users, to tip about books etc. Some of theadvantages of weblogs according to my respondents are itssimplicity, its rapid way to disseminate information on and itsability to allow users to participate and communicate. Some ofthe disadvantages of weblogs as a working tool are that it takestime to blog, it’s hard to get readers and that there are fewpeople who give comments on the blog. / Program: Bibliotekarie

The purpose of this essay is to examine progression in user education atprimary and secondary school levels, specifically the role played byschool libraries, librarians and strategy documents in securingeducational progression. Progression is examined in the user educationprovided by the five schools, part of the same municipal schoolmanagement area which share the same strategy plan. The area, NorraFäladen, was awarded School Library of the Year in 2011 for its work,making it particularly interesting for this essay's purpose. The studycombines interviews with the area's three school librarians, who dividetheir time between the five schools, with an analysis of the strategydocuments that regulate user education within Norra Fäladen. Theanalytical framework is based on: AASL's model of progression in usereducation (Standards for the 21st-century learner); Ekström's model forsuccessful and active strategy documents; Kuhlthau's theory of thelibrarian's role in the information search process; and Limberg'staxonomy of the role of the school library.The study shows how a number of concurrent factors and prerequisitesinfluence how goals for progression in user education are met. These are:clearly formulated joint goals which are adapted to local conditions andillustrate progression in a concrete plan of action, thus ensuring thatactivities are realised; a shared view of the importance of informationliteracy and how best to promote it; teacher and school librariancollaboration in user education and pedagogical development; and, activesupport from school leaders, who recognise the role of the school libraryin this work. / Program: Bibliotekarie

This essay investigates the integration of the school library into teaching in one of Sweden’s senior high schools and the effects of the new education act which gives school libraries a stronger standing. A second purpose is to investigate teachers’ views on professional responsibility with regard to the development of information literacy. Through an email survey different aspects of library integration are investigated. The integration level is assessed according to the library taxonomy for teachers by David V. Loertscher. The results show that teachers do not use the school library to any great extent and only a small percentage has developed their library use after the reform. Although some teachers have increased their use of the library they still see it mainly as a source of material and do not see the school librarian as a resource for the development of new teaching methods. The studies limitation was that the survey was only answered by 34 %. The conclusion is that in order to improve the school libraries’ standing and higher levels of integration in line with Loertscher’s taxonomy, stronger support is needed from school management, principals and politicians as well as clearly assigned responsibilities and awareness of the school library’s potential as a learning resource. / Program: Bibliotekarie

<p>This master's thesis examines information literacy and students in secondary education. The study is framed within a sociocultural perspective of learning and the method used is questionnaires. The major question posed is how and where students seek information. Other questions are if the students critically evaluate and analyse in­formation sources and if teachers and school librarians cooperate with each other in order to help the students with their assignments.</p><p>The findings indicate that most students regard information seeking as fact-finding or finding the right an­swers to the question. Only one third of students experienced information seeking as seeking and using informa­tion for understanding a topic. The first place the students look for information is the Internet. Half of the stu­dents think they have been trained in information seeking. More boys than girls believe they have been trained. Three quarters of the students do not think they need more training in information seeking. Two thirds of the students think they have been sufficiently trained in source evaluation and more boys than girls believe they have been sufficiently trained. Just over half of the students do not think they need more training in source evaluation.</p><p>A good half of the students think the school library is quite important and almost half of the girls and one third of the boys visit the library once or twice per month. The cooperation between the teachers and the librari­ans does not work as well in the schools as the teachers and librarians wish but is improving. The majority of the teachers and librarians think their cooperation needs to be improved. The majority of the teachers think there is a correlation between information seeking and learning outcomes. All the librarians think the library is a resource that ought to be integrated in the students' education.</p><p>My conclusion is that the majority of the students are not information literate. To be information literate, the students need to have the ability to locate and evaluate the required information. Information seeking as scruti­nizing and analysing is a pre-requisite for lifelong learning.</p>