Today, "the digital library" is the common way of describing a managed collection of information, with associated services, stored in digital formats and accessible over a network. Digital libraries have mainly been developed at research libraries, but during the last few years public libraries have started to offer similar services.The aim of this Master's thesis is to study how the Swedish public libraries plan to develop their digital libraries according to their mission statements, and in what way they have implemented them at their web sites. 21 public libraries, the largest in each Swedish county, were investigated.The library mission statements are investigated to find out in what terms the digital libraries are described and to what extent. The library websites are examined with respect to what kind of digital services are offered, to what extent they supplement or replace the physical library, and if there are new digital services not found in the physical library.In most mission statements the digital library is referred to in sweeping terms like "IT activities" and "new media". However, a few of the libraries clearly regard the digital library as an important part of the future operations, speaking of it in well defined and extensive terms.The public library websites are relatively homogeneous when it comes to services supplementing physical library activities, like web access to the library catalogue and links to other library catalogues.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine a new music downloading service called Musikwebben, which is now available in many Swedish libraries. It focuses on the differences and similarities between this service and illegal music sharing services. The question is raised, whether the appeal of Musikwebben is high enough for it to be able to ?recruit? users from similar, illegal services. To answer this question, a qualitative content analysis is used, to explore various views on what legal downloading services have to offer and how these differ to illegal alternatives.

AbstractObstacles or opportunities? ? A study of the experience of collaboration of social welfare secretaries and school staff.The purpose of this study is to illustrate the importance of the work with children and youth through the joint efforts between different authorities. The study deals with the collaboration between the social services and schools in the Ludvika municipality. The objective of the study is to investigate how teaching personnel and headmasters in compulsory schools and the social welfare secretaries in Ludvika, experience the collaboration, and how this works. On the basis of the objective, we have formulated some relevant questions; To what degree are schools aware of the model of collaboration, which is the basis for collaboration within the municipality, and are there any differences in awareness between different categories of employees? Other questions deal with differences in how the social services and schools experience the collaboration, discrepancies between different schools in this regard and if the respondents? experience any obstacles and/or opportunities by the collaboration.Collaboration is, and has been, a pressing issue for a long time in the public debate.

Från litteraturen påverkar införandet av Web Services hos 25 storföretag och 3 myndigheter i Sverige. Undersökningen utfördes genom en enkät där motivations- och problemfaktorerna indelades i tre kategorier: innovation, organisation och miljö/omgivning och dessa graderades sedan på en femgradig skala. Den viktigaste kategorin enligt respondenterna var organisation. Dessutom lämnades möjlighet till att lämna egna faktorer och kommentarer. Inom kategorin innovation graderade respondenterna som högsta motivationsfaktorn att Web Services fungerar bra ihop med kommande standarder och som näst viktigast faktorn fördelar med plattformsoberoende.

This two years master?s thesis in Library and Information Sciences aims to investigate and put the services of 118100 Svar På Allt (SPA, an SMS mobile question and answer service) and Fråga biblioteket (FB, a library operated e-mail reference service) into the context of the reference encounter. Questions sent to SPA and their subsequent answers are analysed, and part of these questions are forwarded to FB for comparative studies. Both of the formats are compared to the reference encounter as a whole. The framing of the question originates in the assumption that there may be a need for further negotiation of the questions submitted to the aforementioned formats.

On March 1, 2012, Google introduced its new privacy policy which is applicable to all Google services. This means that search history may be saved by Google indefinitely and may also be associated with the specific account during the first 18 months. We assume that few people read this policy and we have hypotheses that a deeper knowledge of the contents of the privacy policy affects how users perceive Google as a company and/or the usage of Google services. In this study, we have conducted surveys at the IT University of Gothenburg, to investigate how many participants that have read or possess some knowledge of the privacy policy. We have found that very few participants claim to have read the privacy policy.

The purpose of this essay was to inquire how workplace conflicts are managed at a number of public social services offices in south-western Skåne. This essay's main research questions were: What organizational factors determine how conflicts arise and are managed in a work environment? To what extent are such factors prevalent at the above-mentioned social services offices? Are certain conflicts typically prevalent in the public social services? If so, what are they? How does the workplace in question manage the conflicts that arise? The inquiry was conducted among the staff of three public social services offices, applying the vignette method. According to previous research, certain system conflicts are typically prevalent in public sector organizations, which adversely affect the work conditions of social workers at the organization's professional level. Two examples each of this conflict type and of interpersonal conflict were included in the inquiry.

Social enterprises make up one of the groups of participants that provide welfare services financed by public funding. The object of this study is to describe and analyze from a theoretical point of view which conditions, in what fields, by which division of responsibility and finally through what decisions these social enterprises are allocated a place in the market for social welfare services. The company that has been the object of study offers services in the field of social welfare and in employment. In the study a triangulation of qualitative methods has been used: studies of literature on the subject, recurrent interviews and observations and also reviews of documents. The results have been analyzed from theories on the space available on the market for social services, on social economy and on social capital in the form of strong, weak and bridging bonds.

The aim of this study is to understand and describe school staff´s view on the legal obligation to report child maltreatment. With this approach I will get a better understanding how child maltreatment can be caught up in the Swedish community. Previous research shows that school is one of the authorities who report most children to social services. Previous research indicates that cooperation between school and social services reduces the time of the investigations, and gives a better understanding of what is to be reported. The result shows that a functional cooperation between school staff´s as well as between school and social services is important for children to be caught up in the community.

The purpose of this study is to explore professionals? view on why men purchase sexual services with a focus on heterosexual prostitution where the man is the buyer and the woman is the seller. To achieve the studys? purposes and to be able to examine professionals? views a qualitative approach is taken with semi-structured interviews. Six professionals who work or have been working in the organisation KAST (Buyers of sexual services, own translation), who are situated in Malmö, Gothenburg and Stockholm, have been interviewed.

The purpose of this essay was to study how school welfare officers cooperate with other school staff, regarding children in vulnerable positions, and how the school staff apply their obligation to report to the social services if they have concerns regarding children at risk, according to the law of social service, SoL.We have especially focused on questions concerning cooperation, both between the school staff, and between the school and the social services. We also wanted to identify some of the restraining factors and dilemmas that could come up during the process of reporting children at risk to the social services. The study was based on qualitative interviews with ten school welfare officers from the same municipality.Our conclusions of our study are that there exists a well-developed cooperation between several organizational levels, including the school welfare officers, other professions in the schools and the social services. There were though opinions among the school welfare officers that they wanted to increase their professional claims in relation to the school nurse, due to their larger competence in talking to children. Regarding the formal responsibility to report to the social services, a majority of the school welfare officers felt they had access to the support they needed from both their principal and the students healthcare-team, and that they were not left alone in the process..

The increased specialisation and complexity in products and services has created the need for Swedish companies to focus more on their core businesses. This has resulted in them opting to buy services and products that lie outside of their core business from consultancy businesses or other types of suppliers. When companies describe their offers in internal and external marketing it is done often in terms of company or service attributes that are not based on customer value or offered value for the customer. The reason for this is that companies have not adapted their services to the different needs of their customers. As a result of this, they run the risk of offering the same services as their competitors and communicate values that the customers either do not understand or experience as value adding.

Since 1996 the Swedish households have ten folded their volume of loans for own homes that is attached to a floating interest rate. Also in 1996 the Swedish electric market was deregulated. These two facts have increased the volatility in the household expenses for these two commodities. This thesis studies the risk for homeowners attached to the exposure against the electric and the credit market. The risk model used is Cost-at-Risk which is usually used by public authorities for analysing the risk involved with national debt.

This paper concerns the question of how one can frame a political message. I investigate how a political frame is bound both to the line of argumentation connected with a certain discourse and to the audience closely related to that discourse.I have chosen to study a single case where the policy process was characterized by a framing contest. The case shows how negotiating the new Services Directive is affected by framing efforts made by the parties negotiating.My conclusions are that the question of a Services Directive lent itself to a definition in terms of "either/or"-arguments. Thus the Directive could be considered either a threat or a possibility. It was the very nature of the matter - the development of the internal market on services - that made possible a debate along the lines of a "left/right"-struggle and where a frame that drew from the European Social Model offered the better explanation thereby succeding in defining the new Directive as a threat.

The Swedish field of digital X-ray imaging has since several years relied heavily on distributed information systems and digital storage containers. To ensure accurate and safe radiological reporting, Swedish software-firm eCare AB delivers a system called Feedback?the first and only quality assurance IT support product of its kind. This thesis covers several aspects of the design and implementation of future versions of this software platform. The focus lies on distributed directory services and models for secure and robust data propagation in TCP/IP networks.