The aim of this masters thesis is to investigate how childrens librarians deal with gender issues in their work when acquiring and mediating books to children, and how reviews in Bibliotekstjänsts Sambindning can be of help in this aspect. The thesis focuses on children between 6 and 12 years of age and their reading of fiction. Four interviews with childrens librarians and an examination of reviews in Sambindningen have been carried out. The reviews were examined both by finding out with what frequency gender issues are dealt with and by studying 20 childrens books from a gender perspective, comparing my judgement with the one they got in the reviews. The examination of Sambindningen showed that the reviews therein only sporadically bring up gender issues.

This thesis presents the work of developing and testing a programming tool specially designed for children. The purpose of this tool is to make children capable of creating visual simulations and games that consist of actors interacting in a virtual world. The name of the programming tool is Behavior Cards, which comes from the fact that actors are programmed by giving them cards representing different kinds of behaviors. Behaviors are to some extent pre-programmed and can include general events specifying how the actors should act in different situations, in contrast to specifying every possible situation that can occur. The idea is that Behavior Cards should be easier to use than a more traditional text based programming tool, but it should also be expressive within the domain of visual games.

The purpose of my Masters thesis is to investigate how childrens librarians in public libraries perceive and meet imposed queries during the reference interview with children and young people. What do childrens librarians think about imposed queries from children and young people? What problems can arise during a reference interview with children and young people, and what strategies can be used to solve them? How can childrens librarians prepare for imposed queries from children and young people that have arisen in school related situations? The study was carried out at public libraries in Sweden. In the review of the literature results from prior research and other relevant material are presented. The theoretical framework includes a communication model on imposed queries developed by Gross, and two other models Levels of Mediation and Zone of Intervention, developed by Kuhlthau.

The aim with this thesis is to examine how childrens librarians apprehend and use the nationally initiated reading project Bokjuryn as an instrument in their work. The main question is as follows: How does Bokjuryn work related to the way public libraries pass on literature? Two questions are asked: How does the childrens librarians use Bokjuryn as an instrument and how do they motivate their work with it? and How do the childrens librarians view the reading project Bokjuryn as a method of passing on literature? The study is based on qualitative interviews with five childrens librarians. As a theoretical starting-point Jofrid Karner Smidt´s work about mediation of literature has been used. A model has been created and used based on Louise Limbergs analyses of the differences between school libraries and public libraries to analyse the result of the interviews together with other literature.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the subject matter of visual communication in presentation brochures of two Swedish regions: Region Halland and Region Dalarna. My focuses are the following questions: what is the aim of the brochures and in what ways does the visual material relate to that aim? How can strategic communication be defined through a visual perspective and in what ways is it useful in the context of presentation brochures of the regions? What sort of communicational functions are specific for the visual material in relation to the written language of the brochures? Lead by these questions, I start by analyzing the brochures through a textual analysis and a social semiotic approach. The result shows that the aim seems to be both political and commercial, but that the visual elements relate more strongly to the commercial aim than to the political aim by the way they strive to present a positive image of the region. The visual elements work in strategic ways that I define as visual strategies.

According to the Läroplan för förskolan, Lpfö 98, are pre-schools suppose to introduce the written language and embrace childrens curiosity about the ability to communicate with the written language. The purpose with this research is therefor to study the attitudes of pre-school teachers towards three- to five years olds writing and also to shred some light over which role teachers and other adults have when children learn to write. The earlier research contains different theories about how children in pre-schools conquer the written language and the teachers role in this process. Teachers attitudes towards and thoughts about childrens early writing could be made visible through interviews with teachers who all currently work at pre-schools. The results indicate that pre-school teachers have different attitudes towards childrens early attempts to write.

The aim of this essay has been to find out if children can identify themselves in childrens literature describing children who have immigrated. We wanted to investigate if the interest in reading books about children who have immigrated was the same whether the investigated childrens origin was Swedish or not. We chose two books for this purpose. We also wanted to see what the access to books about children who have immigrated was at three libraries. The locations for the libraries were; in the investigated children´s school, at the main library in the municipality and at a smaller library also located in the municipality.

The aim of this master thesis is to obtain a greater understanding of childrens choice of favourite books, insight in their reading experiences and their thoughts about the reading of these books. We also want to investigate if, and if so, how childrens librarians obtain knowledge of the childrens reading preferences and reading experiences and how they use this knowledge in their work to stimulate childrens reading. To reach our aim we have been carrying out quantitative interviews with six children aged nine to ten years and three childrens librarians working in public libraries. As a theoretical starting point we use the reader-oriented theory and Chambers Reading circle, which states that support from adults is the most important factor in the childs reading process. The empirical results are linked to theories and earlier research and are analysed under four different themes.

This was a project of creating an animated music video for Anna vonHausswolffs song Something is missing. By working with animation Iwanted to broaden my expertise in visual communications. This hasbeen an exploratory work in how I could translate my illustrations tomoving images in the program Adobe Aftereffects. I have formed myown narrative by creating a storyboard. I worked with illustrated setdesign, created an atmosphere in the film and experimented with howto tell a subtle story.

BarnOPAC is a Swedish library interface for children. It was launched in public libraries in Sweden in 2001 and has now become a part of library software equipment in several public libraries. The purpose of the thesis is to investigate the interface BarnOPAC on the basis of the childrens perspective. The questions raised consider: how children experience and handle this interface, how library staff experience it and what viewpoints librarians have on childrens use of it. For this purpose we implemented a user study including eight children using the interface in a school library.

Programmeringsspråken Visual C++, C# och VB.NET (Visual Basic.NET) jämförs, med tyngdpunkt på en praktisk jämförelse av fyra exempelapplikationer. Exempelapplikationen WordCount visar att Visual C++ har förutsättningar förbäst prestanda, men att även C# och VB.NET ger helt godtagbar prestanda. Valet av färdiga klasser är viktigare än språket. Ett olämpligt val kan göra prestandan mycket sämre än förväntat, medan den allra bästa prestandan ofta erhålls med en egen implementering. Applikationen FFT visar att flyttalsprestandan är bättre i C# än i VB.NET.

The aim of this study is to obtain a deep knowledge about identity creation of preschool child-ren at the age of four to sex with creative pictures and its aesthetic learning processes with childrens perspective as a starting-point. The issues that I have used in this study are how childrens identity creation relates to the aesthetic learning processes in the preschool enviro-ment, how children experience the figuration of their own identity related to other individuals and the enviroment by taking different positions in aesthetic learning processes and how childrens identity creation becomes visible in preschool.In order to explore preschool childrens identity creation in aesthetic learning processes the qualitative research-oriented approach has been implemented with unstructured observations and the informal interview as the methods for data acquiring.This studys theoretical points are sociocultural perspective and symbolic interactionism. Both these theoretical perspectives emphasize the significance of communication, taking different perspectives and learning in an interaction between an individual and enviroment within given sociocultural frames of referens which results in an individuals identity development.Results from the study show that childrens painting is more than an occupation with a picture as a product. Childrens painting is rather a playfull aesthetic expression form and a relation-oriented, dynamic learning process which is related to the enriching of individual self, the consciousness and the creation of meaning within preschools frames of reference.My expectation is that my study will contribute to didactic discussions about childrens iden-tity creation while using aesthetic expression forms..

The aim of the study is to explore the meaning of living with urinary incontinence caused by Spina Bifida, self-esteem, psychological well-beeing and expectations on treatment of urinary incontinence in 10 children and adolescents, 9-20 years old, as well as their parents perspective. The study was conducted through semi-structured interviewes as well as self-reports about self-esteem ("I think I am"; Ouvinen-Birgerstam, 1999) and psychological well-beeing (Beck Ungdomsskalor; Beck, Beck & Jolly, 2004). To examine the parents insight in their childrens situation and well-beeing parents proxy-reports was compared to their childrens self-reports. The results showed that psychological well-beeing and self-esteem of the children and adolescents in this study was comparable to normgroups, but that there was big individual differences. The parents proxy-reports are comparable to their childrens self-reports, but vary depending on the domain beeing estimated.

Falls and fallinjuries are very common in peoples own homes in various institutions. Hospital inpatients often fall during daytime in connection with their visit to the toilet. Visual impairment such as cataract, glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy can cause falls. The purpose of this study was to examine patient´s records where falls and fallinjuries were documented at an emergency clinic and to examine if they were registered to visual impairment. The records from 68 hospital inpatients from the age of 65 years and older who did fall during the year of 2004, were examined.

A daily newspaper?s main purpose is to inform its readers without creating noise. Theimportance of the visual presentation is therefore of weight for an effectivecommunication process. This study informs about the importance of typography inthe visual decoding process. The study includes the Swedish newspaper DagensNyheter?s transition from printed media to digital media adapted to an Ipad.