Creating or meeting demands . an evaluation of Bibliotek Gävleborg : a regional library system´s organization and activities

This evaluational study has been initiated by the County Council of Gävleborg (LandstingetGävleborg), politically responsible (and the main economical) authority of BibliotekGävleborg, the regional library institution in the county of Gävleborg, Sweden.The aim of the study is threefolded:1. to evaluate the organization of Bibliotek Gävleborg during the 1990's as we11 as theeffects of a reorganization carried out in 1990, and, through the use of interviews and a questionnaire, to ascertain the attitudes of Bibliotek Gävleborg's branch users (mainlythe municipal libraries in the county) towards the organizational development.2. to evaluate and compare regional library activities in Gävleborg prior to and duringthe 1990's, and to investigate the attitudes of the afore-mentioned branch users towardsBibliotek Gävleborg's activities.3. to investigate and discuss possible future directions of regional library development in Sweden in general, and in Gävleborg in particular.The closing, debating chapter in the study also'contains a few suggestions of measures to enhance regional library activity in Gävleborg

Creating or meeting demands . an evaluation of Bibliotek Gävleborg : a regional library system´s organization and activities

This evaluational study has been initiated by the County Council of Gävleborg (LandstingetGävleborg), politically responsible (and the main economical) authority of BibliotekGävleborg, the regional library institution in the county of Gävleborg, Sweden.The aim of the study is threefolded:1. to evaluate the organization of Bibliotek Gävleborg during the 1990's as we11 as theeffects of a reorganization carried out in 1990, and, through the use of interviews and a questionnaire, to ascertain the attitudes of Bibliotek Gävleborg's branch users (mainlythe municipal libraries in the county) towards the organizational development.2. to evaluate and compare regional library activities in Gävleborg prior to and duringthe 1990's, and to investigate the attitudes of the afore-mentioned branch users towardsBibliotek Gävleborg's activities.3. to investigate and discuss possible future directions of regional library development in Sweden in general, and in Gävleborg in particular.The closing, debating chapter in the study also'contains a few suggestions of measures to enhance regional library activity in Gävleborg

Under utgivning : den vetenskapliga utgivningens bibliografiska funktion

The thesis investigates in what way the scholarly edition performs bibliographic functions as it manages and positions other documents. This is where the study differs from previous research on scholarly editing and bibliography. It aims to trace the boundary between scholarly editing and bibliography by comparing crucial objectives, problems and conflicts in each field. This is accomplished by identifying the argumentation, assumptions and conceptual frameworks that form the rationale for the fields, and subjecting them to qualitative critical and historical analysis. The main empirical material is editorial theory literature, with scholarly editions serving as illustrating examples. Key questions concern the way scholarly editors and bibliographers identify, define and reproduce their respective source material; the reasons for conflicts between editors’ varying expectations of the reproductive force in printed and digital editions; and the connections and demarcations between scholarly editing and bibliography and between scholarly editions and reference works such as bibliographies. Bibliographic and media theory form the basis for the theoretical framework, with additional input from book history, literary theory, genre studies and scholarly communication studies. The thesis suggests a distinction between the two activities of clustering and transposition, and the distortion the latter brings about. These concepts are employed to detect, group and explain activities and problems in scholarly editing and bibliography, who both manage sets of documents by clustering them to one another and transposing their contents by producing new documents. There is a noticeable division of labour between the two tasks, and they also correspond to different types of editions. The study also ties the dominant editorial strategies and edition types to respective bibliographic foci, and argues that central conflict areas are primarily accentuated and only secondarily introduced with digital editing. An idealistic strand treats editing as unbiased delivery of disambiguable and reproducible content, while to a hermeneutical strand the edition is an argumentative and content constraining filter, its editor being a kind of biased author. In a third strand, editions are content circulating ecosystems with a division of labour between collaborating media types. In particular the view of editions as constitutive arguments is related to analogue observations in LIS and genre and scholarly communication studies. On the one hand, editing is supposed to be a dynamic research area, ready to respond to new findings and scholarly ideals. On the other, several arenas demand the edition to serve as a conservative force, static and confirmatory. The potential of digital media points to a distinction between edition and archive, where the former but not the latter explicitly takes an interpretative stand. Digital editing also boosts the idealistic strand by the seeming promise to separate facts from interpretation and to enhance maximum exhaustiveness and reproductivity. Although the thesis identifies many commonalities between editions and reference works and the way these are structured, there is a crucial difference. The edition is simultaneously a work’s reference and referent. Bibliographies and reference works cannot make that claim.Akademisk avhandling som med tillstånd av samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten vidGöteborgs universitet för vinnande av filosofie doktorsexamenframläggs till offentlig granskning kl. 13.15 lördagen den 9 december 2006i Stora Hörsalen (C 203), Högskolan i Borås, Allégatan 1, Borås.</p