The topic of the present paper is to investigate and identify how two translators, Reginald Horace Blyth and David Landis Barnhill, differ in their translation of Japanese haikus by Matsuo Bashô to English. Three focal points of the study are; the translation of haiku rythm, the translation of kireji (a word for separating the haiku) and the translation of kigo (seasonal word). These three components are fundamental parts of Japanese haiku poetry and haiku experience, however there are no set rules on how to translate these haiku components to English. This study contains a comparative detailed analysis of five of Bashô´s haikus, in translation by Blyth and Barnhill. Sample haikus were selected from Blyth´s books A History of Haiku Vol.

The purpose of this thesis is to study how children's librarians in public libraries use non-fiction books in their work to promote reading. My research questions are: What methods do children's librarians use för promoting non-fiction books? Are there children who can gain more from non-fiction books than other children do? Are there any differences in working with fiction and non-fiction books? To answer these questions I have interwieved five children's librarians about their methods, attitudes and thoughts on non-fiction books.The result shows that all of the librarians use non-fiction when it comes to promotion reading but not to the same extent. Some hardly use it at all, mainly because the schools that they are serving demands fiction books when practicing reading skills. while others use it but in less extent than fiction, as a way of separating the library reading from school work either because they want to keep the experience of reading in the library apart from school work or because they find it more efficient to do so.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how children search for and choose picture books while visiting the library together in a preschool group. How do children interact with each other and their teacher while searching for picture books? Which aspects of children's everyday lives are apparent in their choice of picture books? The theoretical frame of reference consists of Brenda Dervin's sense-making approach to information seeking and William Corsaro's sociological approach to studying children's routine activities within a peer culture. To capture children's interaction, we have observed a preschool group consisting of six 3- to 5-year olds and their teacher in a library setting during three visits. Our study shows that children's search for picture books is a social activity that involves various verbal and nonverbal strategies in order to include and exclude each other when they find a picture book that interests them.

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.

This thesis is an investigation of Iranian immigrants and their use of libraries in Sweden. It isbased on a combination of a qualitative and a·quantitative method.Using a qualitative method, I give an outline of the history of lran from ancient times up to the present, as well as the different ethnological groups in Iran and their cultures. The main objective of this part is to clarify the contrasts between Iranian and Swedish cultural, social, linguistic and family structures, and also the characteristics of the crisis that most immigrants go through on their arrival in the new country. The qualitative method also involves structured telephone interviews with eight highly educated Iranians.This method was supplemented by a quantitative study through questionnaires of the attitudes· of lranian immigrants to libraries and reading. Iranians in Sweden turned out to be frequent Iibrary users.

Last spring I did a study where I studied how young girls where being depicted in Swedish novels of 2010. My ambition with this exam is to study how young teenage boys are being depicted in Swedish novels of 2010 and to compare this study and the results with the results from my study last spring. Throughout history we can see that boy?s novels have had the purpose to bring up boys into being adventurous. In the novels of 2010 we can see that boys now are being depicted in another more modern and contemporary way.From my analysis we can see that all the books have many things in common.

Publication of science fiction has a tradition in Sweden. Adult-fantasy does not. In recentyears, the 1980's, Swedish publishers have realised how profitable fantasy is. Of the totalpublication of the two genres between 1989 and 1994, 54% was science fiction and 46%was fantasy. The reason for this even balance is that fantasy-books get reprinted more frequentlythan science fiction-books.

This essay focuses on the pictures in mathematics books for elementary school. The purpose was to see if images in mathematics books for elementary school show traditional gender roles.The aim of the essay has been broken down into following research questions:Vilka färger förknippar de olika matematikböckerna till pojkar/män respektive flickor/kvinnor?How many times were girls/women and boys/men illustrated in the mathematics books?What behavior is associated with masculinity and femininity?Which colours are associated with boys/men and girls/women in the mathematics books?I used a semiotic image analysis method to study the pictures presented in the mathematics books. The theories in this essay were used to see how society makes girls become girls and boys become boys and in what ways the genders are portrayed in relation to each other. In addition, the theories include the question of whether a specific colour is given to a specific gender? The analysis evidently confirmed that the images in the mathematics books demonstrated traditional gender roles.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to accomplish an understanding for childrens librarians purchases of juvenile books. Two main questions are to be answered: - Which considerations do childrens librarians do when buying juvenile books and which goals and motives are behind their purchases? - What do childrens librarians think that their knowledge and competence consists of and how is that knowledge useful when buying juvenile books? To answer the questions qualitative interviews with five childrens librarians have been carried out. The material has been analyzed through a theoretical construction consisting of theories about collection development, book selection and quality judgments. The conception tacit knowledge silent knowledge from Michael Polanyi has also been used for interpretation.

In this study the book talk is examined as a communicative act with a purpose to convince according to an under-lying intention to promote reading. I follow the book talk?s way from an idea of the book talker (and the library) to the reception of the audience, with the aim to understand how to talk about books in an engaging manner. More specifically, the rhetorical situation and the purpose of a book talk, the performance and the means to arouse and retain interest in the book talk as a speech and in the books themselves are examined and the impact of the book talk on the audience.The empirical material consists of observations of two different book talks (both directed to children) and interviews with the two different book talking librarians and a few of the children from the audiences to both book talks. The theoretical framework consists of rhetorical theories from both antique and modern times and I perform a rhetorical analysis of both book talks.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how students in higher education use talking books. This has been inves-tigated through qualitative interviews with nine students. The intention has been to find out how they use talk-ing books and why they have chosen to do it in the way they have, looking specifically on whether there are strategies shared by most of the interviewees.As a theoretical basis of the thesis I have chosen a study, described by Sigrid Hongset, where dyslectic pu-pils tried using printed text and text on tape, as well as both simultaneously. George Kingsley Zipfs ?Principle of least effort? will act as a supplemental theory.The interviews show that the students use talking books in different ways.

In this thesis I investigate what librarians working with children do for six-year-olds at the libraries in order to stimulate them to read. I also investigate how children of this age read and what books are like for these beginners. The background for the thesis is that reading decreased a lot in ages three to eight during the 1980s and 1990s. My aim is to see what projects, methods and other strategies there are to get children to read. The method used is case study.

This study aims to examine how heritage archives in Sweden create oral history by the conduction of interviews. Though previous research have shown that this is a task suitable for archives, there have been a lack of knowledge of how this is actually beeing done. Also, oral history have not earlier been studied in relation to the archives larger objectives. The heritage institutions that have been examined are Sjöhistoriska museet, Visarkivet and Dialekt- och folkminnesarkivet I Uppsala. They are all part of public authoritys and use oral history to create more pluralistic and diverse archive collections.

'Teachers in current Swedish child- and youth literature' is an essay that attempts to understand the reasons behind why authors portray teachers the way they do. The foundation and focus point of this essay are ten Swedish child and youth books that were all published during 2012. Throughout this essay I have analyzed the fictional teachers in these books using the discourse analysis method but also employed a gender perspective. The main questions were these: Do the teachers presented in these books follow the curriculum LGR - 11, or do they represent the authors own education experience brought forward to current settings? Furthermore, was there a difference in how female and male teachers were represented? And if so what, possible reasons could account for that? The conclusions made were thus: ? The teacher characters within these books were mostly a throwback to days gone by, therefore reflecting the authors own memories of their school. ? They were mainly presented to the reader in a negative light which most likely has its roots in how Swedish school and Swedish teachers have been portrayed within the mass media. ? That there was indeed gender stereotyping in how female and male teachers were described..

The purpose of this Master's thesis is to examine if stereotype gender patterns are showing, and how they are showing, in the picture books that have the highest number of loan in Sweden?s three biggest cities. It is also a purpose to show if these gender patterns can be compared to the outlook on gender in the curriculum. The method used is a qualitative text analysis. 13 picture books are analyzed on the basis of Yvonne Hirdman?s theories on gender and Maria Nikolajeva?s theories on children?s literature.