The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to examine and analyze the discourse concerning a new public library in Stockholm. The paper further discusses how this discourse corresponds with what is written about public libraries in a number of national and international documents. To do this I have utilized the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. By using some of their instruments I have established the discourse around a number of keywords. I then use these keywords to see if and how they appear in the documents. My conclusion is that this discourse is concerned with the library as a center of knowledge and that the individual user is of particular interest. By comparing the discourse with what is sad in the documents I found many similarities. The documents portray the public library as a center of knowledge as well, but they also put forward there quality as a cultural center. Further the documents do not show the same interest in the individual user. Hence the discourse concerning the new public library in Stockholm points to a somewhat different view on the role of the public library. / Uppsatsnivå: D

Voluntary organisations provided the first consumer guidance in Sweden. The government'sinterest in the question started during the second world war and has ever since increased.Since the 1970's the local authorities, with support from the community, have played animportant roll in consumer policy work. Due to the economic recession of recent years theappropriation to consumer guidance work has been cut down. The work has been rationalisedand libraries have more frequently been used to spread consumer information.In Stockholm the municipal has been responsible for local consumer information since the1940's. Co-operation with the library of Stockholm has occurred in different forms. Todaythe purpose with the co-operation is to rationalise the consumer guidance work and to makethe information more available to the inhabitants of Stockholm.

The purpose of this master’s thesis is to study resource allocation among district libraries within Stockholm’s City Library (SSB) on three different occasions – 1996, 2001 and 2005 – and to examine whether there exist any inconsistency between the state of the allocation of resources and what might be considered reasonable. During the course of the study, it became apparent that some measurements are more relevant than others when determining whether the allocation of resources is reasonably fair. The most relevant ratio is the share of net cost per capita in relation to population and the population’s composition of children, youngsters and persons with foreign background as a result of relevant political governing documents giving priority to these three groups. The discerned pattern is that a majority of those libraries that over the years have functioned as superior or coordinated libraries have - in relation to their share of the population and regardless of the population’s composition - had a consistently higher share of resources. Those libraries participating in the district board attempt have had a higher share. A third group is a small number of branch libraries which when threatened with closure have been saved by local opinion mobilizing and which where subsequently awarded a nominally larger share of available resources. It would appear to be the case that some libraries within SSB have ended up in bad and good circles, respectively, in terms of resource allocation as was the case in Anna Rydén-Hamström’s study 2003 of libraries in the municipality of Uppsala. / Uppsatsnivå: D

The subject this thesis will investigate concerns the matter of how political ideologies exist within public libraries with a focus on the democratic ideal. Public libraries are part of the political system and we want to show how political ideologies take their shape in public libraries and the possible consequences of this. With the help of three major political ideologies, liberalism, conservatism and socialism we investigate how the democratic ideals of these ideologies are expressed in documents that describes activities the libraries will and have performed. In order to identify these ideologies we use discourses in cultural policy as a bridge between the investigated documents and the political ideologies. As an analytical tool we have developed a model that describes the relation between text, discourse and ideology which we use in our analysis. The results of our analysis shows that there is an imbalance concerning how much influence the different ideologies have over the activities in the public libraries, where we have seen that the liberal ideals have the upper hand. These results are similar to those of previous researchers and we think it is important for the public libraries to be aware of the influence political ideologies have over cultural policy, on all levels, in order to be an objective institution for the citizens in our society.

The purpose of this study is to perform both a quantitative and language philosophical analysis of the folksono-my and the tags in the Stockholm public library catalogue, which together with the Umeå university folksonomy, and the folksonomy of the Norrköping public library are the only library folksonomies in Sweden. The purpose of the first part of the study is to perform an analysis of the linguistical structure of the tags in the folksonomy. To do this a quantitative analysis has been conducted to grammatically categorize and evaluate tags using a method based on Louise Spiteri‟s article “The structure and form of folksonomy tags: the road to the public library catalogue” and the SAO guidelines. This part of the analysis aims to answer questions like: what characteristics do the tags in the folksonomy have and in what ways do they separate themselves from subject headings in a controlled vocabulary? Tags were here categorized according to grammatical properties like parts of speech and their social and private characteristics. A discussion regarding different semantical problems in folksonomies was conducted along with a comparative analysis between the SSB tags and the subject headings of SAO. Based on the findings from the first part of the analysis, the second part aims to answer questions about the use and meaning of tags within a folksonomy. The later theories of Ludwig Wittgenstein are used to discuss the findings of the first analysis. There is a twofold focus here: firstly, on the potential of seeing a folksonomy as a language game, and secondly, on the private characteristics of tags. The latter being a thought that so far has been neglected in studies of library and information science. This part of the analysis aims to discuss the possi-bilities of seeing a folksonomy as a language game and what it is that makes tags in a folksonomy meaningful. It also aims to discuss the possibility of seeing tags as private sensations. Different examples and discussions from Philosophical investigations are used as a theoretical framework in the analysis. The results of the analysis show that tags in the SSB folksonomy mostly consist of single-word terms  - nouns written in indefinite and concrete article  - and that they have a high social value. They highly correlate with subject headings either fully or as see also references. It also shows that folksonomies can be seen as both primitive and more advanced language games, plus that the meanings of tags are derived from the context in which they reside and the context of the folksonomy users. Discussions also show that tags may or may not be seen as private sensations depending on individual perspectives regarding the matter.

Namnet på pojektet är ”Att lyfta ett monument” och handlar om en ny tillbyggnad till Stockholms stadsbibliotek. Förslaget syftar till att utöka bibliotekets publika ytor och utrymmesmässigt fokus har varit basarerna från 1930 som vetter mot Sveavägen. Biblioteket är ett unikt kulturarv och troligtvis Sveriges kändaste byggnad utomlands. Att göra en ny tillbyggnad till ett sådant monument auktualiserar omdelebart en mängd frågor. Min frågeställning när jag satte igång berörde hur jag som arkitekt bör tänka då jag utformar ett tillägg i en historiskt känslig kontext. Vilka förhållningssätt är de mest lämpliga i en så pass laddad och världs­unik ­miljö? Som ­arkitekt tycker jag att man alltid noggrant bör ta ställning till sin omgivning och relatera till den i sitt förslag. I detta projekt har jag fått möjligheten och utmaningen att öva mig i konsten att relatera i en kontext av exceptionellt stor vikt. Metoden som jag har arbetat fram kallar jag för Sampling. Målet vid utformningen av tillbyggnaden har varit att underordna sig huvudbyggnaden utan att hemfalla åt ­pastisch. Min tes är att jag kan tillåta mig själv rätt stor frihet, så länge som jag identifierar och återanvänder bärande motiv, material, rumsorganisation, färgscheman och liknande från biblioteket. På så sätt är målet att de två byggnaderna ska komma att harmoniera och, förhoppningsvis, även lyfta varandra. / The name of the project is "Lifting a monument" and is about a new extension to Stockholm's city library. The proposal aims to expand the public areas of the library and the spatial focus has been the bazaars of 1930 facing Sveavägen. The library is a unique cultural heritage and probably Sweden's most famous building abroad. Making a new extension to such a monument instantly raises many issues. My question when I started was about how I as an architect should think when designing a supplement in a historically sensitive context. Which approaches are most appropriate in such a charged and world-unique environment? As an architect, I think that one should always carefully consider its surroundings and relate to it in its proposal. In this project I have been given the opportunity and challenge to practice the art of relating in a context of exceptional importance. The method I have worked out I call Sampling. The goal in designing the extension has been to submit to the main building without falling into the pastiche. My thesis is that I can allow myself quite a lot of freedom, as long as I identify and reuse the supporting motifs, materials, room organization, color schemes and the like from the library. In this way, the goal is that the two buildings will harmonize and, hopefully, also lift each other.