The explosion of information technology has given users direct access to an ocean of information. Increased availability puts increasing demands on the ability of students and researchers to search for, filter, and structure information. In response, the role of the research library has shifted from being primarily an information resource to being an educational resource with a focus on teaching users what is known as information literacy. This thesis is a study of user-education at the Karolinska Institute Library KIB, the largest medical library in the Nordic countries. KIB has invested significant resources in developing user-education, and has a full-time user-education developer and a formal pedagogical platform for user-education.

Inför en operation med generell anestesi upplever en stor del av patienterna oro som uttrycker sig på olika sätt. För att patienten ska kunna uppleva trygghet och delaktighet i sin vård är en god vårdrelation mellan anestesisjukskörskan och patienten centralt. Genom information kan patientens oro minska samt upplevelse av trygghet öka. Syftet med studien var att belysa patientens upplevelse av patientinformationen. Studien utfördes med kvalitativ ansats med hjälp av semistrukturerade intervjuer.

More elderly, fewer hands: The way forward Sustaining the care workforce as a political challenge ? A case study of?elderly care in Kalmar Municipality This study examines how Human Capital Theory and New Public?Management are reflected in the governance of eldercare in Kalmar?municipality. Based on document analysis and interviews with politicians?and senior officials, the study shows that investments in staff competence?and well-being coexist with efficiency-oriented management practices.?Rather than being contradictory, these approaches are often combined in?everyday governance. The study concludes that the main challenge is not?funding, but capacity and that sustainable eldercare depends on aligning?national goals with local conditions and strong human capital.

Vi vill undersöka kopplingen mellan företagens strategi och chefernas informationsbehov. Vi gör detta för att se hur chefernas informationsbehov ter sig utifrån vår tolkning av Porters teorier. För att uppfylla vårt syfte och för att besvara vår problemformulering har vi använt oss av en deduktiv, kvalitativ metod som bygger på personliga intervjuer med fyra verkställande direktörer. Våra slutsatser är:Företagens strategi påverkar informationsbehovet.De differentierade företag vi undersökt tillskriver information om hot och möjligheter lika värde och går därmed inte miste om information om hot från sina konkurrenter. Ej i enlighet med en tidigare studie av Jennings & Lumpkin.

This is an investigation into the ways in which a group of librarians experience and make use of the intranet in their vocational role. The theoretical frame of reference consists of a model of how professionals seek information, which is based on a role-theory. As a method, I have applied a qualitative case-study. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews I have interviewed five librarians and the webmaster responsible for the intranet in their library. I have investigated how elements such as the age and vocational role of the librarians affect their use of the intranet.

The purpose with this work is to describe the language that is built around the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) in Sweden. Our questions are: What does the professional field look like; who writes, about what and for which kind of readers? How do they describe the expressions and the upcoming of CFS? For which reasons can CFS be considered as a medical diagnosis/illness? How can CFS be understood from a social perspective? Our theoretical starting point is a social constructive theory and also Karin Johannisson's theory about medicalization and Foucault?s theory about power. We have from a literature-exposition of Swedish articles from 1989 to 2006, done a social constructive discourse analysis with help from Laclau & Mouffe's discourse theory, and Fairclough's model of social practices. In our textual analysis we found three dominating discourses: A medical discourse, a social/cultural discourse and a general/popular discourse.

This masters thesis investigates the relation between China and the Information Society as it is manifested in the UN conference the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS. The first phase of this two-phase conference took place in Geneva 10-12 December 2003, with two documents, Declaration of principles DP and Plan of action PA, as main results. The information policy is central to an authoritarian rule in its efforts to keep control over the national identity. The thesis investigates the impact that the information revolution and Internet might have on the Chinese national identity through the acceptance of DP and PA in various aspects. With the use of the information science theories by Manuel Castells and Frank Webster, the vision of WSIS was compared with the Chinese information policy.

Inspection errors are nowadays usually written with pen and paper during building inspections. A company in Stockholm is developing a method by which inspections are made digitally from the beginning and where the inspection attachments shall be stored in a database. The idea of this method is that entrepreneurs can use the database to get an experience feedback from previous surveys so that they can improve their production processes. One problem that occurs is how inspection errors will be sorted into the database. They have to be sorted so that contractors or clients can use and sort out the information in a sensible way when they want to evaluate and make improvements in their production processes.This thesis examines how the inspection errors can be sorted in a structured manner.

Background: Resources that are hard to put a value on and cannot be classified as assets in the balance sheet as well as the development towards the information society has led to an increasing need and use for voluntary information in the annual reports. The increase of voluntary information can foremost be seen in the field of human resources.Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to describe the development of voluntary information about human resources in the annual report of a number of Swedish quoted companies. The purpose is also to see if there is a difference in the development between manufacturing companies and service companies.Method: Six manufacturing companies and six service companies were chosen from the Stockholm exchange A-list. Using both a qualitative and quantitative research method the annual reports of the chosencompanies were studied for the years 1995, 1997, 1999, 2001, and 2003. A model consisting of seven categories; health, diversity, recruitment, staff turnover and comfort, benefits and motivation, education and competence development, was developed to clarify were the development took place.Conclusions: After finishing the study one can tell that the amount of voluntary information about human resources in the annual report has increased even though the percentage share of the total annual report only has increased appreciably for manufacturing companies.

Due to traditional beliefs about biological differences between the sexes, the sex ratio is abnormally uneven in northern parts of India. There is a combination of old methods like female infanticide and new technologies, which make selective abortion possible. The strong practices of dowry transform daughters to economical burdens to their parents. They face mortal danger before, at and after birth. With rapid economical progress and advanced technology, India is a country in progress.

Domestic weekly magazines in Sweden are characterized by an emphasis on practical editorial material such as cooking recipes and knitting patterns, and also contain a comparatively large share of reader material. This makes it possible to study the readers through texts produced by themselves. The aim of this study of columns of readers' tips on domestic work is to analyze how readers embody a specific femininity centered around the woman as responsible for the home, in the sense of everyday maintenance as well as aesthetic development. The author defines this femininity as "home maker". The theoretical framework for the analysis is the sociological theory of Pierre Bourdieu, and Jonathan Potter's and Margaret Wetherell's model of interpretive repertoire is also used where modality is discussed.

Varje år drabbas ca 50000 människor i Sverige av cancer. Ungefär var tredje människa kommer någon gång att få en cancersjukdom. Syftet med denna litteraturstudie var att beskriva personer med cancer och deras upplevelse av information i samband med behandling och/eller undersökning. 11 internationella kvalitativa vetenskapliga artiklar analyserades med manifest kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Analysen resulterade i tre kategorier: Betydelsen av olika informationskällor, missnöje över att inte få individuellt anpassad och relevant information från vårdpersonal och att kontrollera och hantera situationen genom att erhålla eller undvika information.

AbstractThe purpose of this study is to illuminate if the preventive practices and the identification of early signals about reading and writing difficulties is different between two Norwegian and two Swedish teachers' work in preschool. Research questions focused on the differences as well as similarities between Swedish and Norwegian educators working preventively current literacy in preschool, and their efforts when they identify signals to reading and writing difficulties.The study has been conducted through interviews with four female teachers, two who work  in Norway and two in Sweden.Swedish and Norwegian teachers work preventively on reading and writing, analysis resulted in three categories; books in text and pictures, words and rhyming chants and songs. No differences between Norwegian and Swedish pedagogues? prevention methods could be identified, however Norwegian teachers put more focus on rhythm and rhythmic pat exercises than the Swedish educators.The conclusions are that the Norwegian teachers mention more preventative approaches and early intervention for children with suspected dyslexia, than the Swedish teachers in the study makes. The Norwegian teachers also seem to have access to more expertise in connection with suspected dyslexia, compared to the Swedish teachers.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to study an electronic reference service from a user perspective. By qualitative interviews with eight students the thesis examines their information behaviour, why and when they use the service, the user?s experiences of the service and the communication with the librarian. The users have all used the Swedish electronic reference service Fråga biblioteket ? Forskningsbibliotek.

Bakgrund: I Sverige drabbades 7000 kvinnor år 2005 av bröstcancer. Forskningen har gått framåt vilket resulterade i att fler kvinnor överlevde diagnosen bröstcancer. Kvinnor som drabbades av bröstcancer var i stort behov av stöd och information från sjukvård, vänner och familj. Syfte: Syftet med denna uppsats var att belysa betydelsen av stöd samt information för kvinnor med bröstcancer. Metod: De vetenskapliga artiklarna som utgjorde studiens resultat erhölls genom litteratursökning som gjordes i databaserna SweMed+, PubMed och Cinahl.