The purpose of this Master Thesis was to study the reader in the informal reading group. To fulfil our purpose we have used the following questions: how did the reader become a reader and what does her reading look like, why do people choose to participate in a reading group, how may the group influence the individual member in her reading and interpretation of a book, does the reading group have a therapeutic function, how does the informant find the group dynamics and different roles in the reading group, and finally how does the informant experience the discussion in the reading group. We have used two studies about reading groups, one by Elizabeth Long and one by Jenny Hartley. Our theory is divided into reading and group psychology. We have interviewed seven women belonging to different reading groups.

An efficient market implies that the use of fundamental analysis should not result in excess return, and that any return exceeding the market average can be explained by compensation for risk, accord-ing to The Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM). The focus of this study is to test whether the suc-cessful investment strategy developed by Piotroski (2000) generates excess return on American data, after risk adjustment by using Fama & French?s (1993) 3-factor and Carhart?s (1997) 4-factor CAPM. Initially we form stock portfolios based on companies characterized by high book-to-market values, additionally, we divide them into different performance classes by ranking them with Piotroski?s (2000) measure of financial performance, F_SCORE.

The aim of this study is to examine the collection One Thousand and One Nights (also: The Arabian Nights) from a european perspective, by comparing different european translations. The study focuses on three translations into Swedish from different periods of time and how the tales have changed in the translation process - depending on the prevailing line of approach and Western perceptions of Eastern standards. The thesis of the study is that Eastern culture, from a Western perspective, has been seen as exotic and different but not as a high literary culture and that this view has affected the translations into european languages. The study shows, among other things, that Western culture is many times considered normative in the translations and that the translators often give their own voices a prominent role, also that common Western notions of the East affects the translations.The word ?orientalism? is used frequently in the study and it refers primarily to the image of the Orient as it is described in Edward Saids' book Orientalism: as a Western construction whose main purpose is to strengthen its own conception of the Orient and thereby strengthen the Western identity as better than the Orient.

The aim of this study is to look at censorship and attempted censorship of books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) people in public libraries in the USA. People from the public can submit formal challenges to a book at the library when they find the material offensive which can lead to those books being taken away from the library shelves. The questions asked are why GLBT- literature is being challenged, and sometimes banned, and how do the libraries deal with the challenges to the books.It is nowadays the people from the public, rather than the government or the librarians that are behind many cases of removal of books with homosexual themes. The study presents some of the fictional GLBT- literature that has been cause for much controversy in the USA. All the five examples mentioned are children?s books concerning GLBT- themes and are among the most challenged books in American libraries in the past twenty years.

Projektet har utförts ur ett bokförlags perspektiv och förklarar Natur & Kulturs byte av teknisk plattform för deras digitala läromedel. Detta projekt var ett delprojekt och delades in i tre faser: FAS 1: Förstudie, FAS 2: Genomförande och FAS 3: Analys och utvärdering. Syftet med projektet är dels att ge en helhetssyn över hur bytet skett i praktiken inom bokförlaget, och dels undersöka målgruppens förväntning på den nya tekniska plattformen. Projektets mål är att producera två titlar i produktions- och publiceringsverktyget 3D Issue, med utgivning höstterminen 2015. Metoderna som har använts i det här projektet är: intervju och en sammanställning av Natur & Kulturs enkätstudie, och en variation av deltagande observation.

What happens when one moves about in the city? In this essay I will explore how we through our movements create our own temporal cities. I base my investigation on Michel de Certeau's theories from his book The Practice of Everyday Life vol 1. De Certeau believes that by just walking in the city ? a mostly unconscious and for many trivial activity ? you write it, creating different types of spaces that can be understood using linguistic terms.In my essay, I develop de Certeau's theories about ordinary activities by applying them to two less ordinary ? and between themselves quite different ? spatial practices:  fare evasion on public transportation (plankning) and the urban activity of parkour.

In a time of economic turmoil and financial crisis profitability matters rise higher and higher on company agendas. Many companies are pressured to find profitability to avoid layoffs or even bankruptcy. Profitability essentially depends on the margin on the product or service sold and the costs associated with selling these products or services and hence these areas are of vital importance if companies are to improve profitability. Previous research has focused, for the most part, on product profitability while customer profitability has received less attention. This study is based on a case study of a Swedish publishing house and aims to investigate how the company?s Cost-to-Serve varies between its distribution channels.

The debate in the media on a new Swedish sex education movie sparked our interest in this study. The twenty-eight minutes long movie ?Sex on the map? is the first of it?s kind in twenty-five years. It is also part of a bigger sex educational project that contains, apart from the movie, a book about sex education, a documentary and a teachers guide. The project is a co-production between the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company (UR) and the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education (RFSU).We were interested in how teachers received information about the project, and what their attitudes were towards it.

I FORM is the biggest health magazine of Scandinavia. It is a magazine that treats subjects like health food, training, sports gear, sex and relationships. The magazine addresses women directly and only women appear in the magazine.This is a study on how I FORM portrays women in their segment called ?Addicted to? (Biten av). It is a study of what kind of stereotypes that are used and also what kind of pictures that has been used to portrait the women.

Children of today are surrounded by many different kinds of media. Books have to compete with new media like computers, video games, many TV-channels etc. The aim of this study has been to investigate the reading habits of 9-12-year old boys in their spare time, and their reasons for reading related to their use of other media. Our interest has been to shed light on the boys reading habits, their preferences and motives for reading and their reading functions. Even though our focus has been on their reading, we also have examined their use of other media and the function of this use.

The aim of this thesis is to examine how secondary teachers in the subject of history are using the textbook in their teaching. Four questions are being dealt with in this thesis. What importance is being placed on the use of history textbooks by the secondary teachers? What priorities do the secondary teachers have? How do they deal with student interests? And what is the importance of the secondary teachers? work experience? I have interviewed four secondary teachers with different work experience to complete this thesis. A Dictaphone has been used in all the interviews. Research has shown that textbooks now have a central role in teaching and the lack of alternative materials and reduction of teaching hours has made it difficult to replace. The main conclusions of the thesis are that the history textbook has a dual role depending on the teacher you ask, and that the history book is used differently by the teachers.

AbstractBackground: When an acute illness or trauma occurs, life becomes disorganised and shattered for the critically ill person and his/her family members. The family members are confronted with thoughts about life and death which can cause stress and anxiety. How the family members cope with the crisis is individual and depending on personality and earlier experiences. Aim: The purpose of this literary review was to illustrate the family members´ experiences when dealing with a critically ill family member. Method: A literary review was made based on fifteen qualitative and quantitative scientific articles and a literary book.

In this essay there will be four text books from grade 1 studied, the first one are from the year 1976 and it will be going forward to the year 2012. The aim of this study is to see how the genders are depicted and represented, as well as what roles the genders are given. I do also want to see if there is a notable change in this over time. I will be doing a study based on the quantity of the contents, and I will also be doing a critical discourse analysis.The result of the study showed that there were more gender-based constructions that referred to women in all of the four books, which indicates that women are represented more often in these reading books. It is most common to portray the genders in their stereotypical roles, which again are present in society, but sometimes these roles are depart from what?s present in society.

Syftet med examensarbetet är främst att undersöka hur genus framställs i barnlitteratur samt fokusera på bibliotekariens roll i samband med utlåning av barnböcker till förskolan och vårdnadshavare. Som förskollärare ser vi boken som ett pedagogiskt redskap och som ett stöd i ett genusarbete. Vi har erfarenheter av att boken har ett stort användningsområde och de flesta böcker lånas via biblioteket. Därför ser vi att bibliotekarien har en viktig roll för förskolan i deras bokutbud. LpFö98 tar upp genusarbetet som en del av verksamheten, vi anser att det är vår skyldighet att ha kunskap om genus och dess betydelse för kommande generationer.

This master thesis deals with events, dynamics and problems of mediated information seeking within the context of a new information service called "Book a librarian". The study, based on a survey and interviews both in academic and public libraries and participant observations in academic libraries, has its theoretical base in the cognitive theory of information retrieval interaction. The cognitive view is used to throw light upon the need of an ongoing dialogue during the session in order to detect the information needs of the user and to conduct a successful retrieval of information. The communicative interaction is seen as threepart interaction between the intermediary, the user and the information system, where the current cognitive states of all three participants are involved. The study shows that the cognitive obstacles for a successful mediation and information retrieval are mostly connected to participants current knowledge of the subject and of the retrieval techniques.