The aim of this Master?s thesis is to identify and describe thedifferent roles that are expressed in a public library by researchingthem in the four policy documents concerning Västerås public libraryin 2010 and by interviews with three specially chosen key persons.Further studied are the discourses that can be perceived in thematerial and whether or not the roles could come in conflict witheach other. Laclau and Mouffes discursive theory constitutes themethodical frame for this thesis and by using terms from discursivetheory the analysis was made in four steps.Seven roles were identified from the policy documents concerningVästerås public library and the interviews with the key persons. Thefirst role of the public library was the intermediary of knowledge andinformation, the second was viewed as a democratic role, the third asa marketing role, the fourth as a role that handled the collaboration,the fifth role was to improve literacy, and the sixth and seventh roleswere as a culture centre and a meeting place. With the help fromkeywords five major discourses were found within the material.

This essay discusses the interaction between the authorities in Nacka municipality in Sweden and supervisors within the eldercare. In Nacka politicians have gradually started delegate responsibility for how care-giving for the elder should be done and focus instead on formulating economical objectives and overall rules. It is up to the approved supervisors of eldercare to deliver good care and quality. The method chosen to accomplish this is public choice. This method is a part of the big New Public Management (NPM) reform which have had a big impact on Swedish public sector since the 1980´s.

At the beginning of the 1970´s forestry feared an imbalance in the future wood supply. Because of this anticipated "timber slump" forest companies undertook a variety of measures to counter this. One of these measures was the introduction of exotic tree species. The choice finally ended up with lodgepole pines which were considered a fast growing tree species compared to our native tree species. Theambition for the new lodgepole pine stands were to run these with rotation periods of between 40-60 years, thus smoothing out the ?timber slump? that was anticipated.

As the number of people owning a smartphone rapidly increases so too does the opportunity for various researchers to exploit this technology. The possibility to recruit people to participate in research studies improves and with it the chance to get more diversified target groups in terms of age, socio-economic status, geographical location, etc.In this essay, I argue that the opportunities smartphones offer in terms of collecting research material is vastly underestimated in several areas, bearing in mind the advantages they present. In order to support my argument, I shall present a case study carried out in the research area of happiness ? an area where the use of smartphones has provided significant opportunities for research.In order to gather the advantages and disadvantages of this method of study from the participants? perspective, I have followed a happiness research study which is a collaboration between Umeå University and The University of Stockholm. I have interviewed the participants of this study in order to assess the advantages and opportunities that smartphones offer in research programs.Overall, the participants? opinion of this research method was generally positive and it was considered to be quite easy to participate in the study and respond to the questions asked.

The aim of this master thesis is to study if the websites of the Swedish public libraries are accessible to all people. According to the library law all people must have access to the public libraries and their information services. Today, when the Internet is one of the largest sources of information, it is important that all people, including those with different kind of disabilities, children, elderly, immigrants and people with old technical equipment, have access to the public libraries websites.We have in this study considered the graphic user interface, the language, the structure and the navigation possibilities at ten public library websites. We have from a checklist of our own, based upon the opinion of different experts such as Jacob Nielsen and Tommy Sundström, investigated the websites.The main finding of our study is that the websites are generally accessible even thou we found a lack of accessible for immigrants. Most of the websites had some pages in English, but none hade all pages in this language.

Den offentliga sektorn i Sverige har under de senaste decennierna påverkats av stora reformvågor. De bakomliggande idéströmningarna har kommit att gå under samlingsnamnet New Public Management där ekonomiska värden starkt betonas. Man menar att det inte bör göras någon skillnad mellan privata företag och offentliga organisationer i valet av organisationsstruktur och förspråkar att den offentliga sektorn närmar sig den privata sektorns organisationsstrukturer. Samtidigt har röster höjts kring att den offentligt-rättsliga public service-televisionen, SVT, kommit under starkt inflytande av dessa ekonomiska värden på bekostnad av de demokratiska och att detta är problematiskt.Studien tar utgångspunkt i dessa fenomen och undersöker med hjälp av diskursteoretiska utgångspunkter huruvida SVTs ledning agerar med utgångspunkt i en New Public Management-diskurs.Våra resultat visar att kritiken är befogad i det avseendet att det finns en tydlig NPM-prägel på den diskurs som ledningen brukar. Även när hänsyn tas till omkringliggande relevanta förändringar ter sig de förändringar som ägt rum inom SVT som utmärkande då man istället för att fokusera på sitt ursprungliga uppdrag och söka problematisera sitt förhållande till demokratin har kommit att prioritera dessa ekonomiska värden..

The essay's aim is to explain how responsibility distribution between private and public bodies, primarily within three important service areas, can be visualised in light of the fact that they have experienced different forms of readjustment. We have chosen to study this by looking at the restoration work taking place after the hurricane Gudrun swept across southern Sweden on January 8-9, 2005; and we have chosen to concentrate on the service areas of electricity- and telephone supply, and public transport. The responsibility distribution has been depicted by carrying out qualitative interviews with employees within both private and public bodies included in the restoration work. The conclusion produced is that there were obscurities in the formal responsibility distribution between private and public actors taking place in conjunction with the hurricane restoration work.In a deeper analysis, the result can be explained by a ?several hands? problem arising since the number of actors has increased as the public sphere has adopted leadership forms influenced by the private business sector.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to illustrate the public librarian. People in general, including library users and leading personalities in the field of culture in the communities do not know the tasks of the public librarian. We presume that the vague picture of duties of the public librarian might cause problems. In this dissertation we mean to examine only public librarians, hereby we exclude for example, university- and company librarians. The sentences of this thesis are: How are the public librarians viewed, in meaning of, tasks, role/-s, comptetence/-s, status and image? And can we call it a "profession" in the classical sense? We answer these questions by using relevant literature, interviews and conference paper.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate the reasons for public libraries to have story-time today and also the reasons for story-time at the public library historically in Sweden. Why is the phenomenon of story-time still existing at public libraries today? The study is based on a questionnaire that was sent to childrens librarians in the Västra Götaland region. The material collected in this questionnaire was put together and resulted in six different categories showing the libraries purposes and thoughts of their story-time activities. The categories were: cultural heritage/tradition, joy of reading, language and imagination, library visits, storytelling and mutual experience.

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.

This study seeks to outline the reason why public limited firms choose to bear the cost of auditing despite the annulation of legal requirements. The aim is to provide an overview and a better understanding of the decisions made by such firms. My research work focuses solely on the dentistry branch. Relevant data has been collected through interviews and adequate scientific theories are implemented to canvas and analyse the reality of auditing for public limited firms working with dental services.The background knowledge contains historical aspects and the importance of audit obligations together with the fact that the law no longer regulates these conditions. To begin with, the regulations were institutionalised in order to prevent financial and fiscal criminality and offence, in public limited companies.

After the orange revolution in Ukraine, hope was given to achieve fullydemocracy in the whole society. However, this has not been the outcome; theUkrainian public administration still has problems to deliver what the societydemands. By answering the question: ?Which problems have the publicadministration to become democratic and how can we explain them??, we analyzethe failures within the public administration to accomplish democratic procedures.The empirical material in this thesis is mainly obtained from interviews andresearch during a field study in Ukraine. The problems for the civil servants inUkraine to act as guardians of the society are strongly connected to an inadequateprofessional knowledge.

This thesis investigates how energy is used in three public baths today and suggests measures that could reduce the energy demand. The results show that there is a great poteltial for energy savings i public baths, and that it would be interesting to examine some of the proposed measures further..

The value of a good reputation for organizations is increasing today as consumers and citizens become more aware of brands. If a crisis hits an organization, there is now more to lose than before concerning reputation. Therefore the organization?s communication strategies must be developed to sustain the organization?s reputation during and after a crisis.In the field of crisis communication there are two distinguished theories which concern what an organization with help from crisis communication should do to undergo a crisis without losing its reputation. These theories are image repair theory and situational crisis communication theory (SCCT).

The purpose of this study is to examine and explain why three Swedish public libraries failedin their ambition to act as information services for small and medium-sized firms (SMF). To support this purpose two major assumptions are made:1) Public libraries who plan to run this kind of "business" must act with the same means as "professional" services.2) The service must be adjusted to the information needs of the customer.Based on these assumptions sixteen factors which are crucial to the "success" for this kind of service are presented.Applied to the information services of Lidkoping, Sölvesborg and Västervik, these factors reveal a number of shortcomings and mistakes made by the libraries.To understand this result these information services are seen as parts of a traditional Swedish public "library-thought". It is shown that, fundamental ideas in the way the public libraries are defined, like the responsibility to act in a neutral and democratic way, also characterised the three information services.These ideas together with the opinion of SMF as a "rational" information-consumer resulted in information services who did not meet the information-needs and information-behaviour of SMF..