?Facebook has become as natural as having a phone? The use of social media in three libraries in the Umeå region ? an evaluationSocial media has come to be an integral part of people?s everyday life, as well as the business world in terms of communication and marketing. More and more libraries also embark in the use of social media, and the purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of social media in three libraries in the Umeå region. The libraries all use Facebook as their current, primary social media. Thus this study focuses partly on the analysis of the content on each library?s Facebook page, and partly on the experiences of the responsible librarians. The evaluation is based on a mix of existing tools in evaluating social media that are relevant in a library context.

This bachelor?s thesis examines costs of welfare services in municipalities of the region of Västra Götaland in Sweden. Previous research provided reasons to expect a link between costs of welfare services and demographic changes. Furthermore, Willam J. Baumol?s theory about ?the cost disease? also provided reasons to expect a link between welfare services and salary levels.

I have examined the conditions for participation in an opera masquerade. Theoretical support has been found in Michail Bachtin, Richard Schechner and Judith Butler. The main study object has been a masquerade organised by the workers of The Royal Opera of Stockholm in 1925. The masquerade is examined as a social practise with distinct aesthetic framing. The analysis shows that the opera masquerade share some characteristics with the medieval carnival culture as described by Bachtin, but differ in many ways as well.

Mounds of fire-cracked stones is a typical Bronze Age monument for the region around lake Mälaren. They are usually, because of their content, interpreted as piles of rubbish. But as they often have kerbs, are situated on cemeteries and sometimes contain human bones, the traditional interpretation is not fully satisfactory.The main focus of this essay is on the mounds of fire-cracked stones which contain human bones in the region north of lake Mälaren. With a detailed study of these, and a comparison with those without human bones, my aim is to get closer to an explanation why the human bones were deposited. The essay consist of a comp­ilation  of 98 excavated mounds and a database with various information gathered from excavation reports and archive documents.With different kinds of osteological aspects taken in consideration, the study shows that human bones have been found in about a third of the mounds.

This essay discusses the Nordic region Bohuslän the decade after it became "Swedish" in 1658, during what I call the region's "transition period". The wide cause of the study is to show how the traditional understanding of this state shift (and of state shifts in general) need to be problemized and understood in the light of the state conditions of Early Modern Europe. By examine court protocols from the local-court of Orust and Tjörn (one of five local courts in contemporary Bohuslän) and the local noble's writings to the Swedish parliament, a tricky mixture of references to different territories gets observed and analyzed.To approach the difficult identity problems, I have assistance in Peter Sahlins' conclusions from his study of the French-Spanish borderland during the same period. Especially helpful are his identity schemes by which he (inspired by the Norwegian anthropologist Fredrik Barth) supposes that each identity originates from a counter-identity. This study ends up in an attempt to reconstruct the landscape of identities and counter-identities found in the sources, according to professor Sahlins' schemes.

This diploma work, with the title Represent and Consume the Land ?I drove following the picture of a spruce through Sweden, is presented as a film and an essay and the aim is to explore the perception of an individual with the film as the medium. To reach this, it is necessary to destabilize my own reality, to explore myself at the same time as I study landscapes and representations of landscapes. The diploma work focus on representations of landscapes of Sweden, external pictures and internal images. The picture is a very strong medium that holds and comunicate myths, about the landscape and about the nation.

The following essay aims at the interplay between regional och municipal growth work, and theway cultural heritage is used in growth work strategies. The main issue has been whether theregional strategies are followed up in the municipal strategies, which has been investigated bymeans of question which impact the region?s strategies has at the local level.The essay draws upon an instrumental perspective on cultural heritage and cultural environment,here defined as instruments in the national development and growth efforts. Three publicationsthat highlights potential roles of cultural heritage and cultural environment to act as instrumentsin the regional and municipal development and growth efforts has thereby been selected astheoretical models. These roles has further been summarized in a tabular form as a schematicdivision of main themes with sub-categories, used as a framework for deciphering the regionaland municipal strategies.A content analysis of available strategies at both regional and local levels have been used as amethod for investigating the issue, where the role of cultural heritage and cultural environment(as defined in the schematic table) has guided the reading.

Lately an increasing portion of the public debate in Sweden has been devoted to how societies may facilitate entrepreneurship, yet a negligible portion of this debate has discussed the impact of the community spirit on entrepreneurial activity. Further, this connection is a relatively uncharted field in terms of research as well. The aim of this study is accordingly to advance the study surrounding the impact of community spirit on the propensity for entrepreneurial activity and add new empirical data and insights to the existing body of theory. A four-month ethnographic study of the Provo-Orem region in Utah, USA, comprising of in-depth interviews and participant observations, was therefore undertaken with the aim of understanding the community spirit in the studied region and its influence on entrepreneurship. The thesis finds that numerous values such as self-reliance, family focus and security together with a strong religious culture make up the essence of the community spirit in Provo-Orem.

The essay is about how teenagers around 18 years of age in a small town in Sweden talk about gender, body and sexuality. The study is based on two focus group interviews with five boys and four girls. We have then thematized and analyzed the material with queer theory.The results show how young people see heterosexuality as something 'natural' and gender as biologically determined. The teenagers are critical towards anything that deviates from the traditional nuclear family consisting of mother, father and children. Norms are created in their speech as some of them acts as so called "border guards" for these norms.

Projects is the most common work model within the cultural area, but what is a cultural project? The definition of cultural projects is ambiguous. There are also no compiled information about what it means for culture to be pursued in project form. Scientific research about traditional project management and success criterias are wide-ranging. So is the scientific research about cultural studies and cultural policy.

In this study I will analyze how men who buy sex interact with one another on two different Internet communities: ?Sekreterarakademin? and ?Flashback?. This analysis is carried out in an attempt to challenge the conventional image of the man who pays for sex.The aim is to examine the role of Internet forums for men who buy sexual services related to cross-border, both in terms of standard borders, gender boundaries, boundaries of sexuality and masculinity. I will also attempt to investigate what opportunities that are available to overrun different borders and how these opportunities affect the conditions of the various players. I will evaluate theories such as homosocialtet, hegemonic masculinity and normalization used by KAST (Köpare Av Sexuella Tjänster, the Swedish public support for clients of sexual services) and which are partially consolidated in studies published by KAST concerning issues related to internet based prostitution..

Den här uppsatsen är en explorativ fallstudie som visar bakgrunden till begreppet Supported Employment, hur det har kommit att översättas till den svenska kontexten och hur den omsätts i praktiken genom att studera två ESF projekt som fall. Med utgångspunkt från ?Supported Employment? metodiken har två ESF-projekt, som båda ämnar skapa bättre möjligheter för psykiskt funktionsnedsatta att delta i arbetslivet, analyserats. Utifrån analysen visar uppsatsen att Supported Employment inte bara används som metod, utan också används för att lyfta fram nyckelbegrepp för förbättrad samverkan mellan aktörer som redan arbetar för att målgruppen ska komma ur sitt utanförskap och kunna nå och få tillbaka ett arbete. Slutsatsen är att centrala begrepp inom Supported Employment som egenkraft, självkänsla och motivation, i dessa projekt är lika viktiga i kontakten mellan inblandade aktörer som i utformningen av själva arbetsplatssituationen; att lika stor fokus i projekten läggs på att koordinera själva handläggningen och hanteringen av projektens målgrupp, som att erbjuda riktiga arbeten genom ett utökat socialt stöd. Nyckelord: Region Skåne, ESF projekt, Supported Employment..

Andelen konkurrensutsatt offentlig verksamhet har ökat i jämn takt sedan början av 1990-talet, och utvecklingen har både sina förespråkare och kritiker. När det gäller de stora partierna inom de olika politiska blocken, är konsensus numera att konkurrensutsättning är här för att stanna, skiljelinjen ligger mer på hur stor andel av den offentliga verksamheten som skall konkurrensutsättas. Även bristen på en genomlysning och uppföljning av konkurrensutsatta verksamheter har väckt kritik. Kostnadseffektivitet är det som förespråkas vid konkurrensutsättning och används som syfte till att anlita privata eller korporativa aktörer etc., för att bedriva en tidigare offentlig verksamhet på ett mer företagsekonomiskt effektivt sätt.Syftet med uppsatsen var att undersöka hur Region Gotland använder sig av konkurrensutsättning och upphandling för att nå en företagsekonomisk effektivitet i sin verksamhet, och jämföra det empiriska underlaget mot tillgängliga teoretiska källor. För uppsatsen har följande två frågeställningar valts som uppsatsens problemformulering: (1) På vilket sätt genomförs konkurrensutsättning för att uppnå företagsekonomisk effektivitet i offentlig verksamhet? (2) I vilken omfattning sker uppföljning av verksamheter för att kontrollera att tilldelade resurser används på bästa sätt?Uppsatsen visade inte på något otvetydigt klargörande när det gäller ekonomisk vinst vid konkurrensutsättning, eftersom uppföljning och utvärdering av upphandlade verksamheter inte sker i den utsträckning som vore önskvärd.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate which enter- and exit barriers that exist on the banking market for small enterprises located within the region of Gotland. The reason was to examine and identify which barriers that could affect the mobility among small enterprise bank customers on the bank market. To identify the barriers, the study was carried out partly by a quantitative survey with 33 small business owners respondents located at three different concentrated small enterprise areas within the region of Gotland. And partly by qualitative interviews that were conducted with two employees at Länsförsäkringar Gotland Bank.The result indicated that the enter barrier mostly depended on the aspect that business owners of small enterprises believed that bank switching were complicated. The business owners did also consider bank switching as time demanding.

Vid tjälsäkring och andra bärighetshöjande åtgärder på vägar över torvmark är kostnaderna betydligt högre än genomsnittskostnaden för förstärkningsarbeten på övriga marktyper. Inom Vägverket Region Norr används i dagsläget huvudsakligen traditionell urgrävning och återfyllning som jordförstärkningsmetod vid torvmark. Vägverket Region Norr ser ett behov av att skapa ett inriktningsdokument för hur man lämpligast bedriver den geotekniska undersökningen och vilken jordförstärkningsmetod som kan vara lämplig att använda vid förstärkning av befintliga vägar på torvmark. Huvudsyftet med examensarbetet har varit att skapa ett underlag till inriktning för val av den mest optimala, ur ett tekniskt och ekonomiskt perspektiv, jordförstärkningsmetoden vid förstärkning och breddning av befintliga vägar på torvmark. I rapporten behandlas, baserat på litteraturstudie, de vanligaste jordförstärkningsmetoderna och geotekniska undersökningsmetoderna vid byggande på torvmark.