The purpose of this master thesis is to investigate how the public library can support adult learning through collaboration with other actors in the community. This is done by examining the activity of Linköping municipal library towards the user group adult students. The questions raised consider; the political view of supporting adult learning, the role of the public library, who are the actors in Linköping, the experiences of collaboration and finally what promotes and restrains collaboration. The investigation is done as a case study with qualitative methods. The qualitative methods was found to be the most appropriate for this study, since the majority of the empirical material has been collected through interviews.

This thesis is about the effect of political efficacy on societal participation among youths aged 15 to 29. It takes a starting point in the gloomy view of the decline of political participation among citizens in the western world, especially pointing out youths as a threat to democracy. This is a broad subject to take on so my aim becomes a bit more specific. The aim of the thesis is therefore to investigate if belief in ones own capacity and in the responsiveness of the political system affects the actual participation among youths in Europe, independent of a set of alternative predictors. Moreover the thesis is divided into two sub-investigations, one qualitative and one quantitative.

This thesis should be regarded as an integrated research synthesis. The purpose has been to analyse how the literary sociologist Lars Furulands model the literary process correlates in relation to todays book market for fiction. The central problem has been: In what different ways can some of the main actors featuring in Furulands model of the literary process use, produce or provide copyright protected works of fiction which are electronically distributed? Three questions have been considered to penetrate this problem: In what different ways can to judge from some projects which have been carried through at common public libraries electronic works of fiction be provided to their presumed readers? What reasons could there be as it appears in a number of texts that four Swedish authors have chosen to disseminate their works of fiction by the aid of the Internet? Which main functions may, according to current research, be supported by electronic media in connection with editing and retail of fiction? During this study a picture of two quite disconnected processes of publication has materialized. These processes seem to proceed parallelly to each other, without any close contact, in a traditional respectively an electronic circuit.

This thesis analyses how a radiology department at the largest hospital in Sweden, Karolinska University Hospital, most profitably could expand its capacity for investigating cancer patients using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The queues today for patients waiting to be scanned are long, which delays the start of cancer treatments. Meanwhile the hospital has a budget deficit of half a billion SEK, which make any expansion hard. In this thesis we evaluate the alternatives of investing in new machinery; utilize the current machinery better by using them more days annually or through a shift work system. Finally we evaluate a combination of these.

The following thesis concerns the conceptualization of openness within the open access movement. Open accesscan be understood as a phenomenon or a movement that aims at changing the current system of scholarly communication.Consequentially, the movements goals arose in relation to the escalating serials crisis in scholarly communicationand the increasing power of commercial publishers. The purpose of the thesis is to study three centralopen access declarations with the aim of uncovering the different conceptualizations of openness found withinthese texts. Leaning on the theoretical position known as actor-network theory, the declarations role within a surroundingnetwork is explored by focusing on how openness as a concept has been produced and reproduced bycentral actors. Two overarching questions frames the study: How is openness conceptualized within the declarations?And how can openness, as a concept, be understood as an effect generated by a larger network?The first part of the study focuses on the first question.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine and analyse which effects a service strategy has on the control system of an organisation. The thesis takes a service perspective, and it is assumed that a service strategy gains competitive advantage and that the goal of the service strategy is to increase the customers? satisfaction level. A qualitative in-depth case study was performed on a Swedish beauty company. The organisation?s vertical structure was examined, from central to local level.

The aim of this master thesis is to analyze how and why Scandinavian-American history has been used in exhibitions in both Scandinavia and the United States after the end of the Great Migration. More specifically, the thesis deals with the Swedish and American exhibitions of the controversial Kensington Rune Stone, discovered in Minnesota in 1898. Despite the fact that its authenticity has been disputed by academic expertise, it has been displayed by many prominent actors. The Rune Stone is one of many purportedly pre-Columbian artifacts found in the United States. Moreover, it is an identity marker, harboring many kinds of identity constructions. The thesis therefore focuses on the meanings that the Rune Stone has been charged with since its discovery, as historical culture and in specific exhibits, on how it has been displayed, and on why it has been exhibited at  national museums in both Sweden and the United States. The principal source materials are five exhibitions of the Kensington Rune Stone.

This thesis is a study of Futurum.kom´s campaign "Lyssna dig rik". Futurum.kom is a regional marketing project between Länsbibliotek Sydost, Regionbibliotek Kalmar and 25 public libraries in the county of Blekinge, Kalmar and Kronoberg. The aim of the Futurum.kom project is to strengthen the role of the public library in society. "Lyssna dig rik" was a cluster group campaign with the aim of making people know about the possibilities of loaning audiobooks in libraries. The target group was lorry drivers in the age of 30-65 with the possibilities to listen to audiobooks at work.

The purpose of this study was to examine what previous research says about children?s experiences living in a low-income family. Its aim was to found out what children themselves say about their life living in a low-income family and what consequences, practical and emotional, low-income environment has on children. More specifically our aim was to find out how children themselves experienced their situation compared with their peer?s economical situation.

The purpose of this paper is to study how the TV program Border Security: Australia?s FrontLine (Gränsbevakarna Australien) can be seen to reproduce networks of human and non-human actors. The aim is thus to investigate how boundaries between nations are upheld and how people, as a consequence, are discoursively categorized and what preconditions this create for people?sidentity- and meaning-making practices.The theoretical and methodical framework is built upon Bruno Latour?s work on Actor-Network-Theory, and discourse analysis inspired by Michel Foucault. The empirical material consists of two episodes of the TV program.

Background: Ambiguity and confusion of ideas within the area of social responsibility have led to that companies not really know how to work with these types of questions. One way for companies to deal with their social responsibility is to affiliate to an initiative that exists and through this show their standpoint. One of these is Globalt Ansvar, a Swedish governmental initiative that is based on Global Compact?s principles and the guidelines of OECD. What does it mean for the companies when showing their point of view? Is this a way to gain legitimacy?Purpose: The purpose with the thesis is to judge if organisations? work with Corporate Social Responsibility gains more legitimacy by affiliating to Globalt Ansvar.Research method: A survey made through telephone interviews with representatives from all of the fifteen Swedish companies which today are affiliated to Globalt Ansvar.Conclusions: In order to give the affiliated companies more legitimacy, Globalt Ansvar has to be a legitimate initiative.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine ideas used to legitimate Swedish digital libraries, with a focus on the cultural heritage, their relation to cultural policy and an eventual crisis within the latter. Which ideas are linked to digitalisation? How do the arguments for creating digital libraries differ between central actors? How do the digital libraries relate to cultural policy and an eventual legitimacy crisis? These are the questions this thesis seeks to answer. The theoretical starting-point consists of a legitimacy discussion and its connection to Swedish cultural policy. The method used is idea analysis.

The essay's aim is to explain how responsibility distribution between private and public bodies, primarily within three important service areas, can be visualised in light of the fact that they have experienced different forms of readjustment. We have chosen to study this by looking at the restoration work taking place after the hurricane Gudrun swept across southern Sweden on January 8-9, 2005; and we have chosen to concentrate on the service areas of electricity- and telephone supply, and public transport. The responsibility distribution has been depicted by carrying out qualitative interviews with employees within both private and public bodies included in the restoration work. The conclusion produced is that there were obscurities in the formal responsibility distribution between private and public actors taking place in conjunction with the hurricane restoration work.In a deeper analysis, the result can be explained by a ?several hands? problem arising since the number of actors has increased as the public sphere has adopted leadership forms influenced by the private business sector.

The recent development in society?s structure has given rise to a more complex reality for the Swedishbanks. There is an increased pressure from external stakeholders for the banks to take a greater socialresponsibility in society; the bank must therefore focus on both direct as well as indirect effects of itsactions. The term corporate social responsibility implies that the company does not only focus on itsfinancial status but also on values such as ethics and environment. These commitments are crystalized,more or less clearly, in the banks? lending policy?s, whom are entirely defined by the banksthemselves.The nature of the abstract CSR expression gives rise to uncertainty, both in regards to the banks ownefforts towards social responsibility but also for the external stakeholders, for which it can be quitedifficult to understand what commitments are actually made.This study aims to investigate how the Swedish banks public statements, with regards to their lendingpolicy, correlates with the actual actions carried out by the banks.

I am in this essay to find out how to successfully combine new development with preservation of natural values, mainly large scale vegetation and ground formations.This is done by studies of three developments. The first development, Engeltofta backe, lies 7 km northeast of Gävle. The expectations of natural preservation were not fullfilled when this area, after the explotation, did not have any vegetation of value left. The second example, Östra Kvarnskogen in the community of Sollentuna, shows, as far as one can tell at the moment, a sucsessful combination of new development and preserved nature. The third example is a development in the community of Kullön. In this area the ambition of combining preservation and development was fullfilled. After studying vital documentation in each planning process, I made interviews with different actors in each of the three processes. I thereafter compared the different documents and answers from the interviewed persons to find out if there were any significant similarities or differences which could be of importence when natural values is to be preserved in new developments. My conclusion of this study is that it is of great importence to define key expressions often used in the process, such as natural values and preservation.