The gaming market has become the fastest growing market for leisure and is one of the most popular forms of homeentertainment. This has generated a media debate about how people are affected by gaming and concernes how we are affected by the violence that may occur in games. Games proponents argues that gaming is the future of teaching and computer games are becoming a sustainable and popular instruction strategy. Some studies have long used computer games for educational purposes. By interviewing high school students in focus groups as qualitative research, I studied their attitudes towards computer games as a learning tool.

The aim of this master thesis is to investigate how the OPACs Online Public Access Catalogue used by public libraries have adapted the features and possibilities offered by online catalogues, for the purpose of searching for fiction. This is done by comparing five OPACs to Amazon.com, an online bookstore. The questions investigated are: Have the OPACs developed from the principles of the card catalogue and adapted to the features and possibilities offered by online catalogues, when searching for fiction? Can the library catalogue provide the same features as Amazon.com, when searching for fiction? How do the OPACs use the resources that online catalogues provide when searching for fiction, compared with Amazon.com? The thesis is based on two qualitative studies. The first study presents five OPACs from different library systems and examines which features they have in common with Amazon.com.

This Masters thesis examines the position of films in Swedish public libraries. We have, by way of comparing various statistical data, determined that the status of film in public libraries is week. We have completed earlier research by mapping what genealogical, discursive patterns that could be outlined in the Swedish government reports from 1949 until today, focussing on the activity goals and media policy of the public library. We have, on the basis of Foucaults theories on genealogy and archaeology, where text documents are considered to be meta-descriptions giving each other authority, analyzed if there any discursive excluding or contextual formulations exist in the usage of the language concerning the goals and the media attitude of public libraries. We have mapped contextual discursive formulations that to the commissioners have become neutral starting points for their assumptions and conclusions.

During the late twentieth century, political and societal changes gave rise to an increased interest in performance evaluation in public organizations. This development also affected libraries in the public sector. The main concern for this master thesis is performance measurement in libraries. In this study two different types of libraries are investigated, one public and the other academic. My aim is to find out if and how performance measurement appears in the libraries annual activity reports.

This thesis is an attempt to study computer games and playful computer programs for childrenand youth at Swedish public libraries. The main method used, is qualitative interviews.The main reason the libraries in the study offer computer games and playful computer programsto their users, is that every member of the society shall have opportunity to use newtechnology such as computers and computer programs. The users of this media are for themost part boys. The librarians in our study wish to have pedagogical games and programswithout violent themes at their libraries. Lending computer games and computer programs isnot of any priority for the libraries..

The social imbalance recruitment has been a current topic for years. Since much research has focused on the higher education's problems with this, this thesis aims to investigate if you are already at the high school choice were influenced by your social background. To get a further dimension to this topic, the French sociologist Bourdieus thoughts on people's possession of, what he calls cultural capital was used, and we made use of it in the sense of parental education. Through a survey conducted in four ninth grades in two municipalities with different characteristics in terms of socio-economic conditions, we asked questions about their choice to high school. What programs did they choose? What factors were important? And which person had influenced them? The results showed a pretty clear dividing line between the pupils who came from homes with strong cultural capital to those who did not in the same sense.

The multicultural society of today where individuals have varied cultures and languages is different to the homogeneous society of the past, and sets new demands upon the school. The school library can play an important role when it comes to the integration and the acceptance of students with a different mother tongue. Provision and access to literature in the student?s mother tongue is seen as a strong indicator of a school that promotes a multicultural environment, and it?s also linked to the student?s feelings of identity and self-confidence. Their knowledge in their mothers tongue is crucial to the acquisition of a second language, and learning in extension.The purpose of this bachelor is to examine how school librarians work with multilingual students in junior high school, and what they consider to be their roles in this context.Confirming previous research, mediation of information and promotion of reading was a central task to the school librarians we interviewed.

The purpose of this study is to examine the physical space of children?s libraries in Sweden, and also to see which influences there are in the literature about the same subject. What ideas exist in the literature about the physical room of children?s libraries? We have studied how and if these influences can be seen in a selected number of children?s libraries. Our theoretical perspective is based on Anthony Gidden?s theory of construction.

The purpose of this ideology critical study is to investigate the hidden content in the reform Gy11 and compare it with the concept new public management. After the clarification of the hidden content, we compare the structure of the organization in Swedish high schools with the structure in public sector called new public management. The main questions of this study are the following: Is it possible to see the foundation of new public management in the Swedish high schools when it comes to the views of knowledge and the formation of goals? Which similarities can we find when we look at the organization new public management and the Swedish high school?The result showed many similarities, both regarding the views of knowledge and the formations of goals. The structure of new public management has been largely implemented in the Swedish high schools and the schools now focus more on instrumental knowledge rather than universal knowledge based on understanding.This is not surprising due to the social progress.

The purpose of this paper is to examine what opinions parents have of the after school-centre, if they know that it has an objective and what that objective is. This will be examined by surveying parents with children in after school-centre. The questions posed in the study are as follows: Do parents know the objective of after school-centre? What is the general view of after school-centre among parents? The results show that 41 percent know that there is an objective while 39 percent don't. Only 6 percent can describe what the objective is.

The technical evolution has a great influence on the public libraries. Electronic media becomes more and more common. This Master´s thesis is based upon the Swedish Library law 9§ (SFS 1996:1596) which says: Public- and school libraries should pay special attention to children and teenagers by offering books, information technology and other media, adapted to their needs, to encourage development of language and stimulate reading. From this point of view we have examined why the children´s departments in public libraries offer CD-ROM games which are based upon characters from the literature, how they are used in the daily activity and how they can contribute to the development of the children´s department.We have made literary studies and empirical investigations including interviews, observation studies etc. The results from this studies shows that both young and adults appreciate the CD-ROM games.

The properties of this material has been studied and it was found that there is very little difference in what affect students in there choice of school, studies and career. Boys who choose hairdressing and styling differ more than girls who choose a career in technics. This is a surprising result which we didn´t expect. In researching background material we learned that it should differ more in perspective of gender. We have compiled the material around young people's choices to high school.

ABSTRACTOur work deals with antisocial behavior among elementary school students between 7 and 16years in the school environment. The aim of our study was to examine how school personnelare experiencing antisocial behavior among students from a gender perspective. We were alsointerested to find out what the school's staff has of the experience of the differences andsimilarities between girls 'and boys' antisocial behavior. We used gender theory, when weanalyzed our individual responses to interview questions. We made six qualitative interviewswith low-and high school teachers, assistant principals, counselors and special educationteachers training in Kalmar County.

The purpose of this essay was to find out whether the students, which had moved from the school of Gustaf Adolf to the school of Elineberg, had been integrated into their new environment. We chose to analyze the degree of integration concerning their schoolwork, how they interacted with the students from the new school, the school of Elineberg, and their level of wellbeing in their new school. We have used two methods, surveys and interviews, to be able to obtain the general picture of how the integration of the students has succeeded.Our conclusions are that the student has adapted well in their new school despite many obstacles along the way. Our essay shows that the students get along well with their new school friends during class, but they don´t socialise in their spear time. Although they seem to have accepted the closure of their old school some students express that they wish the school would be reopened.

The aim of this master thesis has been to investigate discussions about public access to Internet in public libraries. Areas of interest were the debate in Sweden as well as in the United States. The approach was qualitative and questionnaires were distributed by e-mail to a number of Swedish public libraries. The results from the survey were then supplemented with a theoretical background and a literature study. The usable questionnaires obtained from 20 libraries showed a rather uniform approach among the Swedish librarians of how the Internet is best provided by public libraries.