Librarians work supplying children´s easy reader literature

The purpose for this Masters thesis is to describe childrens librarians work in supplying literature to children with emphasis on easy-reader materials. Our main questions are: · What do librarians believe characterizes an easy-reader book, and what do they base their decision on when classifying a book as easy-to-read? · How have the libraries in our study solved the hands-on difficulties associated with easy readers childrens literature? · Which factors do librarians consider to be important when supplying literature to children that are not used to reading or are not good readers? The theories we have used are Aidan Chambers Reading Circle and Karner Smidts view on the librarians professional roles when supplying literature. We have used a case study method, which means that we have gathered information through observation, objective papers and interviews. This has been done at six libraries. Our results show that individual advice and time are key factors when supplying literature to children that are not used to reading or are not good readers. Librarians, in their professional role, need to act as both educators and literature authorities. They must also learn about the childs interests and previous reading experiences in order to be able to recommend suitable types of reading materials. The librarian can, in her role as a social anthropologist, create an enthusiasm to read in children, for instance through book presentations. Book presentations help children to get preview information about books, and will limit the selection of books. There were differences in how the easy-reader material was dealt with at the libraries we visited. The differences were based on the librarians knowledge of literature and her marketing role, where subjective assessments were crucial to how the easy reader material was classified and how it was displayed and located. Nr 88 S. Sellberg: ANN i IR ANN in IR This paper describes the use of artificial neural networks ANNs in information retrieval IR. Part I gives a general introduction to ANNs, focusing on what they are, their properties, how they relate to conventional computing. A few examples of applications, and how they are implemented are also given. Part II describes in some detail the computations performed by the neuron, and how networks are constructed and trained. Two examples of networks used in the IR applications discussed later in the paper are given: Hopfield nets and Kohonen self-organizing maps SOMs. The IR applications, described in part III, are: WEBSOM, SOMLib, and HelpfulMed.Uppsatsnivå: