The rapid expansion of artificial intelligence (AI) poses challenges as well as opportunities for anyone or anything dealing with digital technologies, including libraries. Libraries and librarians have a twofold challenge in that they simultaneously must consider AI applications in library operations as well as AI skills and knowledge as part of…

Academic libraries, apart from their main function, which is to provide information services to academic communities, may also perform a number of social roles in the broad meaning of the term. Accordingly, they now tend to serve as the third place offering inclusion and animation activities to academic as well as local communities (including…

Introduction: An emerging research area within the social sciences is infrastructure studies. This article conceptualises school libraries as an infrastructure among others, allowing for a fresh look at the role of the school library. We review and discuss what constitutes the school library as an important infrastructure at a school site. Method:…

This article discusses potential consequences of implementing bibliometrics as an institutionalized practice in academic libraries. Results are reported from a survey among libraries in Sweden with organized bibliometric activities. Incorporating bibliometric activities is one way of redefining and widening the role of the library. Implementation…

Four decades of research indicates that well-staffed, well-stocked, and well-used school libraries are correlated with increases in student achievement. Well-staffed school libraries have qualified teacher-librarians with qualifications in librarianship, digital technologies, and inquiry-based pedagogies. Well-stocked school libraries include…

Introduction: Self-guided learning has had a major impact on adult education, where information seeking and use are key aspects of learning. With their lack of experience in study contexts, the students are nevertheless assumed to develop information literacy. Method: The paper aims to create an understanding of how information literacy can be…

Libraries are critical learning spaces and may play a significant role in intercultural education initiatives, particularly in Sweden where the national curriculum ascribes central functions to libraries for learning activities. Unfortunately, the ways in which teachers and librarians may collaborate to leverage mutual resources is not fully…

Introduction: This paper investigates participatory practices in library activities for young children and their care-givers in a specific cultural context. Method: Using an ethnographic approach data were collected through participant observations of songtimes for babies and toddlers, and interviews and group interviews with staff and…

This paper reports on a questionnaire survey of 16 national libraries designed to clarify how national libraries attempt to justify their web archiving activities. Results indicate they envisage that a) the benefits brought about by their initiatives are greater than the overall costs, b) the costs imposed on libraries are greater than the costs…

Sweden is in the throes of an adult education explosion; the public libraries of that country are playing a prominent part in this development. (Author/NH)

Sweden has special, public, and academic libraries. Staff for each is recruited from different groups of people and trained in different ways, according to the special requirements, goals, and philosophy of each type of library. This article focuses primarily on information and documentation centers and research libraries. (JPF)

The questions of how and to what extent the changing information environment has influenced the concept of the national bibliography were addressed at the conference, "The National Bibliography in a Changing Information Environment," held in Estonia in October, 2000. The National Library of Estonia, organizer of the conference, invited…

This collection of 15 essays, reports, and notes written by staff members of the Royal Institute of Technology Library (RITL) addresses various aspects of modern librarianship, and outlines some of the RITL contributions to the field. Designed to present a composite picture of the various activities of RITL since about mid-1973, these essays…

Public and private organizations have developed toy libraries in Sweden for children with disabilities and children in need of special support for their development. Toy libraries have become places where parents can acquire advice with regard to play, meet a pedagogue with experience with children with handicaps, and meet other parents with the…

Papers on university and other research libraries, presented at the 1983 International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) conference, include: (1) "The Impact of Technology on Users of Academic and Research Libraries," in which C. Lee Jones (United States) focuses on the impact of technical advances in computing and…