The purpose of this thesis is to investigate what functions the public library has for parents of small children. If and how they make use of the library and what their opinion is about it. The research questions are: Which functions does the public library have for parents of small children? How do parents of small children use the library and what opinion do they have about it? Which factors have an impact on the parents of small children and how do they influence their use of and opinion about the public library and the functions of the library? The theoretical approach is based on Henrik Jochumsen and Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen?s model of the social room and the lifestyles and Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen?s model of the public library?s functions. To answer our research questions we have made seven qualitative interviews with parents of small children.

This paper is based on a quantitative survey. The study aims to answer the questionwhich media young people rather use to take part of the news. The results showthat young people today in Kalmar preferably and often read newspapers on theInternet and mobile phone.The questions asked was about which media they usually use, the level ofconfidence they had in various media, how interest was in different newscategories, willingness to pay for online news and background issues relatedsubjects. The survey was aimed at high school students in Kalmar and weredistributed and collected on-site at the schools. What was remarkable among theresponses was that young people largely had access to a morning newspaper athome and said that they would consider subscribing to one in the future.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine the use of IT, that is the Internet and other applications of personal computers, among seniors 65+. It also deals with issues of access to IT for seniors in public libraries. The theoretical background of the study consists of Rogers "Diffusion of innovations", Hektors categories of information activities, and the Swedish IT-commissions categories of motives and prerequisites for the use of IT. The research questions focus on factors motivating the use of IT, the extent and the purposes of IT use, the consequences and the barriers that IT-users experience, and views on IT in public libraries and IT courses, respectively. Qualitative interviews were carried out with nine senior IT-users.

The purpose of this Master Thesis is to investigate whether the technical service available in the "Reading and Writing Corner" has an influence on the total quality of service in a public library. This service is intended to give sensory/print-handicapped persons access to information. The title KOM LOSS is a Swedish expression for "come on" and LOSS is short for reading and writing support. I have chosen to study three libraries in the region of Västra Götaland, Sweden. The thesis examines total quality from the aspects of goal steering, accessibility, education and marketing.

The amount of electricity is limited in Namibia and the large distance between towns andvillages complicates the energy supply in the country. Therefore an alternative way to provideaccess to appropriate energy technologies is needed. The Government of the Republic ofNamibia (GRN) has adopted an approach of helping off-grid households by establishing EnergyShops in each region in Namibia and these shops are going to sell basic renewable energy andenergy efficient products. The Renewable Energy Efficiency Institute in Namibia (REEEI), theinitiator of this thesis, is coordinating the establishment of these Energy Shops.The main purpose of this thesis was to examine the needs of energy products for the Namibianpopulation and develop an assessment method for the Energy Shop in how to select appropriateenergy products already on the world market. The purpose was also to develop a method forchoosing an Energy Shop.

The main purpose of this master thesis is to investigate the information seeking of lay politicians, part-time politicians and professional politicians in connection with the possible upcoming fusion of the two administrative regions, Västra Götaland and Värmland. The focus of this study has been to study how politicians use and evaluate information and sources of information, and to investigate if there are any differences in how different categories of politicians seek information. Seven politicians were interviewed using semi-structured questions, and a phenomenographic approach was used to analyze the data. In Sweden there are few available studies of how politician seek information, but some international studies have focused on information needs, information sources, selection and evaluation of information. I have used previous research, and data from respondents to compile and analyze my results in three descriptive categories.

This study gives voice to which strategies preschool teacher?s use they teach preschool children in different performance tasks. The overreaching aim of this study was to find out what teacher give expressions to, verbally and in action, and what educating strategy they use when the purpose is that the children are to learn something specific. The theoretical starting-point of the study is a phenomenography research which aims in finding and systematizing of forms of thought in terms of which people interpret significant aspects of reality. The study has a Sociocultural perspective which means that the structuring occurs through choice of which activities children have access to observe and engage in, as well as through in-person shared endeavours, including conversations, recounting of narratives, and engagement in routines and play.

The theme of this essay is the principle of free access to the Swedish Public Libraries, and its aim is to fmd out the opinion of adult visitors of such libraries as regards the introduction of fees on the borrowing of books, already existing fees such as reservation fees, charges for interlibrary loans and charges for the late return of books.The main part of our survey comprises questionnaires that were handed out to 100 visitors at the Norrkoping City Library and 100 visitors at the Eskilstuna City and Provincial Library. In order to illustrate the fee problem from another angle, interviews with staff people from the two libraries were carried out A large part of the essay consists of material aiming to give a general picture of the subject, e.g. how the "free of charge principle" is tied to the Swedish library system, what arguments have been presented to maintain or reverse this principle, and a comparison of the relative situation in other countries. As the conception of popular education is so basic for the "free of charge principle", we also account for the idea of popular education.The result of our questionnaire shows, among other things, that 60,9% cannot consider paying for any of the free services offer by the libraries today, 21,3% answered that they could possibly consider paying for some of the services and 17,8% answered that they didn't know. 76% would rather pay for a library card than stop borrowing books altogether..

This master thesis deals with reading and library habits among young male students at the vehicle engineering programme in an upper secondary school. Also their overall opinion of libraries has been looked into. For the completion of this study all of the 43 students in question took part in a questionnaire while 5 of them were interviewed. The result of this statistical survey complemented with more focused interviews show that at some time or another all the students read, but their preference lies within the news and engineering pages of daily newspapers and periodicals. Those who read books choose action and fantasy for content.

This report describes a bachelor thesis work performed at the cloud storage company CloudMe in Linköping, Sweden. The storage service provided by CloudMe allows users to access their files seamlessly from multiple units at the same time. In the cloud there is storage provided for contacts, calendar and e-mail, which is data nowadays normally used by smart phones.Exchange ActiveSync is a protocol developed by Microsoft which, among much more, provides functionality to synchronize the previously described data. This protocol is supported by the smart phone developers and the ability to synchronize over the exchange protocol is implemented in products by default. Due to this fact it would be preferable to implement support for synchronization from CloudMe to phones over this protocol.

The subject of motivation and feedback is something that the literature regarding management treats as significant. Therefore we have investigated how managers work with feedback in motivational and development purposes within union companies in Gothenburg. According to the existing theory it is important that feedback is given correctly and with relevant content, and thus affect both the recipient's own development and the growth of the business. Earlier authors also discuss the complexity of feedback that it is important to consider all of the surrounding aspects, and that it is important to be aware that there is no single approach that can be directly applied on all types of organizations.To investigate how the managers within the union companies motivate their employers without access to monetary incentive, we conducted a qualitative study with in-depth interviews with four respondents. The respondents were decision makers at their respective union company with the roles as CEO or deputy CEO.

A company library can only exist if it contributes to a positive result for the company. As endusers are beginning to perform searches on the Internet and have access to databases and electronic documents via their desktops it becomes important for company librarians to thoroughly think through what services should be offered to the users so that the library still contributes to the company s profit. The aim of this dissertation was to try to define the services that the company library offers its users having in mind the changes that have taken place concerning the availability of information. I also wanted to explore whether the librarians had the necessary competence to perform the services offered. Six information specialists were interviewed to give their view on the services their libraries offered.

The Library of Uppsala University has decided to change their classification system from the Swedish SAB system to the American Dewey Decimal Classification. One of the main reasons for this decison was that Kungliga biblioteket also has made an exchange between these systems. Due to that, the national bibliography of Sweden classifies Swedish documents according to Dewey Decimal Classification and the SAB system is no longer maintained. A transition to Dewey Decimal Classification will enable Swedish librarians to import foreign catalouge posts and classification codes and will provide them with a common standard between their libraries and other libraries due to the use of the same international classification system. It is disputed whether the Dewey Decimal Classification is equally suitable for all subjects.

A great number of empirical researches show that hedging is associated with higher firm value, particularly hedging interest rate and exchange rate. However, there is no clear support for value-added risk management hypothesis in the case of producers of commodities. Moreover, according to Shrand and Unal (1997), there are two types of risks, core business risks (or core risk) and homogeneous risks (or non core risks), which are based on a firm's comparative advantages with respects to the source of risk. Firm can earn economic profits for bearing core risks in which it has a comparative information advantage. Firm earn a zero economic rents for bearing non-core risks, where it has no advantage information than its competitors.

In Sweden, many children in compulsory school attend after-school recreation centres. All children are offered local after-school recreation centre attendance in the age 6-12 during their parents? work hours. Our aim with this Master thesis is to investigate how after-school recreation centres can use libraries to stimulate children?s own interest to read.