The increased popularity of e-Books in the Swedish publiclibraries started a debate in newspapers and library journalsbecause of the increase in costs, which this popularity hadled to. The main subject of the debate was the businessmodel provided by the e-book vendor Elib, which accordingto some ruins the libraries financially. In this thesis, opinionarticles have been analyzed using a theoretical model ofcultural politics by the Danish Library and Informationscience researcher Dorthe Skot-Hansen. The results of thestudy showed that people from the library field, publishersand authors were the ones contributing to the debate. Theanalysis of the articles showed that the model of culturalpolitics which consists of four general motives: socialchange, education, economic growth and entertainment wasvisible in the articles.

The aim of this master´s thesis is to explore how a library through it´s spatial distribution expresses, and is an expression for, a view of knowledge. This is done by an analysis of the Orkanen library at Malmö Högskola. Questions posed in this study are: What view of knowledge is mediated through the spatial system and in the shelving of Books? What view of learning is expressed in the spatial distribution of functions and artefacts?The theoretical framework of this thesis has two fundamental features. One, which focuses on theories of social space, a part that is mainly influenced by the theories of space syntax.

 The aim of this thesis is to examine men's attitudes towards literature, and how social norms affect their book reading, in order to contribute to the knowledge of why men's book reading is decreasing. This is realized through a discourse analysis of literature recommendations in men's lifestyle magazines.Two magazines, King of Sweden and Magazine Café, are examined through critical discourse analysis. Theories of discourse are combined with theories of gender to explore how gender stereotypes affect men's reading habits.The analysis shows that ideals of masculinity have a great influence on the book recommendations. Social norms, associated with gender, also seem to have significance to whether or not a book is considered suitable for men to read. These are, inter alia, norms of heterosexuality and violence.

This thesis explores the position of book blogs in the literary system through Robert Escarpit's socio-literary model of the book market. Simultaneously the thesis serves as a test for Escarpit's theory: by actively applying his theory and model to a very new and contemporary actor on the book market I hoped to reach or confirm new insights into the usefulness and validity of Escarpit's work for contemporary socio-literary studies.Three book blogs were selected for the analysis and interviews were carried out with the authors. The interview questions were formulated specifically for the purpose of extracting the kind of information necessary for an analysis using Escarpit?s theory. As a complement to the interviews, statistics on the type of Books reviewed on the blogs were also compiled.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate librarians views on reading and reading promotion for young people. The main issue is if activities in reading promotion for people between the ages of 13-19 years can result in inspiring non-readers to actually become readers. To find the answers, qualitative interviews were held with eight librarians. The literature review covers research on the reasoning of young people on reading, a historical review of fiction and reading, a review of arguments on the benefits of reading and finally a chapter which concerns reading promotion activities. The result of this study showed that the conceptions of reading promotion and book talk are very complex and that they each can have different meanings.

This essay investigates and compares the readability in two different schoolBooks: Eko Historia (the primary school grade 4-6) and Epos Historia (the upper secondary school). The questions of the survey are:- Which differences in linguistic and layout can be found between Books meant for the primary school and Books meant for the upper secondary school?- Are the texts easy to read according to the former research in readability?In order to answer the questions structural dimensions as lexicon, syntax, bounds between sentences and narrative voices have been studied. Also the texts disposition and typography have been examined.The results demonstrate that the book designed for the primary school has a verbal structure with an explicit vocabulary, lots of verbs and short sentences. A clear narrative voice gives an impression of spoken language.

The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of women who have been abused by their partners. The study also examines how violence takes shape in a relationship. Based on a qualitative text analysis of three autobiographies and one novel, we have obtained the material for this study. The three selected autobiographies are; "I have not told you everything" by Jessie Andersson, "The nightmare" by Maria Dahlén and "It would be a pleasure to kill you" by Magdalena Graaf and the novel "Hidden" by Liza Marklund. To gain a better understanding of this topic, we have used the following theories; the process of normalization of violence, gender and masculinity.

There are a huge number of Books and articles written in the field of usability and about the art of giving the user the opportunity to find the information he is trying to reach while browsing the website. The writers of these Books are handling guidelines that are recommended to be followed, as well as describing their own views, ideas and theories of the subject. We found an interest to research the different possibilities, if any, to develop a website optimal for the user from a usability point of view. Another thing we noticed was that a need of a substantial guidance existed in website development aimed for recently started companies.New theories and rules regarding usability, which are seen as superior to the old ones and therefore replaces them, is not created that often. This is different from other IT related subjects.

This paper aims to describe and elaborate on a recent discursive change within the new-age movement. Since the seventies and the publishing of speculative popular science Books like The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra and The self-aware Universe by Amit Goswami, the idea that quantum physics resonates with spirituality has become the topic of hundreds of Books and movies.The quantum-spiritual discourse has three distinct ways to approach quantum physics in its discussion on spirituality: The parallelistic approach which emphasizes the similarities between eastern philosophies and modern physics, the monistic-idealistic approach which tells us that mind is the foundation of matter and the scientific spiritual approach which tries to explain spiritual claims scientifically. In the quantum-spiritual discourse, quantum physical phenomena (e.g. non-locality and entanglement) are being called upon to validate metaphysical statements. The primary assumption of the discourse is that the shift of paradigm due to the establishment of modern physics also is a shift of paradigm of spirituality.With the object to examine the common claims made in the discourse, cross-references between spiritual arguments and facts of quantum physics are being made.

The main purpose of this work was to examine the information behavior of nonfiction publishing Company editors. Three problem areas were presented and expressed in the following questions:- What is the information need of the editor in every day work?- Which sources of information do the editors use when they are looking for information and how do they make use of them?- Are there any factors that have an influence on the information behavior of the editors and in what way do the factors effect the information behavior of the editors in their everyday work? And finally, do the editors experience any factors as barriers to information behavior?Six editors, all with academical background, all employed in different publishing companies were interviewed. The result of this study have been analysed within a theoretical framework influenced by the work of Tom Wilson, Lars Höglund and Olle Persson and Block and Lagberg. The result shows that the editors had various regular needs of information in their every day work.

The interest for food and cooking has probably never engaged the people of Sweden as much as it does today. Especially cookBooks are selling better than ever which has been a quite constant trend since the mid 90's. This study explores the connection between visual communication in Swedish cookBooks and the post-modern values which have influenced the market climate and the visual culture. I have used a theoretical framework as reference consisting of theories of semiotics, visual rhetoric, marketing communications and postmodernism. I have been studying six cookBooks, three from the late 00's and three from the early 90's, from the two separate angles of their graphic design and photographic material.

There is no further training in management in teacher education programs, which can create uncertainty among teachers in terms of management. According to the curriculum, the teacher should base it on a democratic approach, but how does it look in real life? The purpose has been to investigate how practicing teachers perceived management and their own leadership style, whether they made conscious choices and if so, whether they then had any purpose in their leadership style. Teachers' views of a good leader and how much influence students have on the teaching, enter into these issues.The survey is based on a qualitative research approach, based on interviews with four active teachers. Although observations were made they did not play any major role in this investigation.

The purpose of this report is to create and develop a model that streamlines and helps the innovationprocess of an idea owner and also in the development of ideas.This model should be able to apply for workshops and in innovation advice or business devlopment. I used the qualitative method in my essay just to get a maximum clear data collection, where the seven respondents were included in the interviews. However, much of the information retrieved from the theory Books and research/science articles, in order to answer the research/Sceince question in the best possible way.

Movie and literary tourism is a genre that has been recognized around the world for a long time but that has only recently got a grip on Sweden. More and more famous Books are being cinematized and because of the success of these movies we can now walk in the traces of Wallander as well as the Millenniummovies.The focus of this study is mainly about the tourists? motivation when it comes to this form of tourism and the purpose is to try understand what needs come in to play when a movie and literary tourism attraction is chosen. The study objects are two movie and literary walks which are based on Books and movies with a fictitious storyline.The performed research was based on a multiple strategy with the qualitative method - consisting of respondent and informant interviews - in focus and the quantitative investigation - in the form of an one-page questionnaire - more as a complement.On the basis of the most fundamental theory of motivation in general (Maslow, 1970) and the tourism research?s more specific travel motivation theory (Pearce, 2005), the conditions for movie and literature as sorts of tourism have been made clear.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how public libraries work with children's Books, in other languages thanSwedish, regarding acquisitions. The purpose is also to describe what the libraries assignments are in regard tochildren with non-Swedish backgrounds. This is then put in a relation to the libraries democratic assignment.The main questions are: What are the libraries' assignments, as described in the libraries regulations? How do thelibraries work to fulfil their assignments?To answer these questions a survey in two parts has been carried out. The first is a study of the libraries'regulations, and various handBooks that serve as an inspiration for librarians.