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.

Pharmaceuticals are environmental pollutants that are a major threat to aquatic ecosystems and very little is known about their ecological consequences. In this study growth, survival and behaviour (sociability, activity and boldness) of perch fry (Perca fluviatilis) were examined in order to study the possible effects of exposure to a benzodiazepine anxiolytic drug, Oxazepam, during embryonic development. The study tested following hypotheses: (1) perch growth is affected positively by exposure during embryonic development; (2) early perch survival is affected positively by exposure during embryonic development; and (3) boldness and activity increases while sociability decreases in perch fry exposed during embryonic development. Embryos of naturally spawned perch were exposed to water with two different concentrations of Oxazepam. The embryos were exposed during different parts (24-hour periods) of the embryonic development, because embryos may be more vulnerable at certain times during embryonic development and/or because the exposure at different times can produce different effects.

This thesis is about language planning in Faeroese libraries as seen from the countrys specific situation, with Faeroese as a mothers tongue, but with great dominance of the Danish language within media. The purpose of my thesis is to examine language planning activities within the library, and the consequences this planning has for the system. Different theories about language planning provides a framework for my model of the library as a linguistic eco-system with actors performing status planning, represented by the government with its influence in cultural politics, the librarian with his or her library tasks and the user with his or her needs. The thesis has a qualitative attempt, and the empirical material consists of different documents about the country and materials from interviews made with seven qualified librarians, employed within general libraries in the Faeroe Islands. The analysis shows that the librarian in different ways promotes the Faeroese language within library activities, and because of the attention paid to the user in the public library he/she influences the librarians planning.

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a further development of the Six Sigma draft to carry through preventing quality measures in developing and designing of new products and processes. With increasing demands on enterprises development processes to be more safety and faster the need of DFSS arise as a product, process and service development concept in the organisations. Design for Six Sigma aims to improve and structure the development process of an organisation and consider the application of the innovation problem solving. The concept aims to leave the structure of the traditional Six Sigma concept and instead, from an innovative perspective, search for new solutions to existing problems. The concept constitute of a toolbox with a lot of quality tools that are divided into phases in a development model.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

AbstractThe tourism industry has evolved to a vital factor for destination development in rural areas. This study aims to see how the tourism industry can be seen as an opportunity for development in rural areas. To be able to develop, rural areas have to be restructured and this study presents the restructuring problems that rural areas usually face and how developing tourism can be seen as a solution to these problems. Five destinations of rural character have been investigated in this study in order to see how these restructuring problems are expressed and addressed through tourism. A key example has been used to provide a clearer image of how these problems and tourism are related to each other and how their interaction can create a positive development for rural areas in Sweden..

The aim of this study is to examine the fiction promoting role of public librarians through their fiction displays. The study covers three problems: What reasons do public librarians give for their selection of displayed fiction? How do public librarians view fiction displays in relation to other promotion strategies? How do public librarians think that promotion through fiction displays will evolve in the future?The results of the study have been analyzed using Jofrid Karner Smidt?s theory of how public librarians view their promotion of fiction. The concepts used are promotion due to public demand, actively recommending and informative promotion, and through dialogue. To account for the problems investigated in the study, eight librarians have been questioned through semi-structured interviews.

The aim with this thesis is to investigate how librarians experience communication with children in reference interviews. In today?s interactive community it is meaningful to study how children communicate with the librarian in virtual reference interview as well as in ordinary reference interviews in physical libraries. Focus has been on finding out what children ask about and how they are asking in virtual reference interviews and in ordinary reference interviews, what type of information needs the children have. The study also focuses on which barriers there can be in reference interviews.

Should libraries first and foremost be a source of free informationwhere the citizens can find whatever information they want, or dothe librarians have a responsibility for what kind of works theypresent to people on their shelves? A wild debate broke out inSwedish media in September 2012, after the artistic leader ofKulturhuset in Stockholm; Behrang Miri decided to weed out allthe Tintin albums from the children´s library Tiotretton. Hewanted to start a debate on stereotypes in children´s fiction, andwhat damage they do to children who face them. The purpose ofthe thesis is to carry out a discourse analysis of this media debate,and to identify the different views that are expressed on thedemocratic mission of the libraries, what media they shouldpresent. The method and theory is based on the discourse theory ofErnesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe and their concepts are used toarrange the analysis around certain themes that build up twodifferent discourses; ?Freedom of information discourse? and the?Weeding out discourse?.The two main questions are: What views of the public librariesselection of works are expressed in the Tintin debate in Tiotretton,and how do the views relate to each other? What concepts arespecific for the debate, and what meanings do they get in thesedifferent views?In the concluding chapter I discuss which consequences theseopposing opinions can have for the future selection processes ofthe library..

This essay discusses the development of swords in the southern region of Sweden, Skåne. It attempts to locate the areas in Europe where the swords were first made and, in doing so, trace the communication routes by which people traveled. The essay deals with aperiod of a few hundred years, from the late eighth century to sometime around 1300. In that sense, it is therefore also a time study tracing the cultural changes and developments in Skåne during the era of Christianization. Does the development of swords follow the overall changes in society, from an isolated pagan district to a Catholic European community, or not? In answering this question, eight swords were selected and put under closer observation.

During consultation procedures between forest owners and the Sámi, data on, e.g., reindeer lichen biomass on the current site is needed. Hitherto, the existing methods of measuring lichen cover and biomass has been either objective methods such as the Point Intercept method, which is time consuming, or some sort of subjective visual estimation, which is faster but less accurate. However, both these methods are sensitive to different observers and/or to different inventories. This paper addresses the further development and evaluation of a photographical inventory method that uses colour distribution in images to estimate lichen biomass. During the autumn of 2011 six different locations, with different grazing pressure and lichen cover, in Norrbotten county were inventoried using both the Point Intercept method and the photographical method, complemented with collection of biomass samples.

This work is a study of subject teachers in social studies and science understand the concept of sustainable development. The work uses a qualitative and a quantitative approach. Teachers in various schools and stages have been answering questions about how they perceive sustainability, how they implement it in teaching and if they feel that school is important for the future of sustainable development at large.The theoretical background is based on environmental ethics as well as the different meanings and definitions of the concept of sustainable development. These theories and definitions are coupled with the empirical results.The study concludes that all teachers throughout the study perceive the concept of sustainable development as something ecological, something that has to do with nature. A few teachers also state economic and social dimensions.Questions about how the teachers in the study implement the concept in their teaching can be seen as three different approaches.

This thesis is a critical discourse analysis of the vision of Malmös contemporary urban development. By analysing official documents produced by Malmö municipality our aim is to make discursive and sociolcultural practices in the constitution and construction of the city visible and problematicize them. To do so we use critical discourse analysis and theories on Urban Studies. Malmö is a city historically labeld as a ?labour- city?, with heavy industry as its main labourmarket.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine what knowledge and competence employers at public libraries apprehend that recent graduates of library and information science (LIS) have. We want to illuminate what qualifications employers demand and expect from LIS graduates and to what degree employers find that LIS graduates correspond to these demands. Our aim is also to see how these qualifications can be categorized and understood. Finally, we try to picture the employers? apprehensions of the education received at LIS.As a method of gathering material for the analysis, we sent qualitative inquires with open questions to employers at public libraries in Sweden.

The purpose of this study was to investigate into the praxis based sociocultural tools that are utilized to enhance language development in early childhood education. Four pre-school teachers were involved in this study. Two were recruited from an independent pre-school "Maria Montessori", practicing the pedagogical philosophy developed by Maria Montessori. Two were from a public pre-school herein named "Kvasten", which has no official philosophy but where the teachers (like in many Swedish pre-schools) work in a general alignment with the principles of Reggio Emilia pedagogics. The theoretical fundament of the study lies in the general theories of language development and education of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotskij, and the comparative element mainly concerns the variations in pedagogical praxis between the two pre-schools, and the way the teachers reason about language development.