Books and reading are important elements in cultural policy. On 1 January 2002 VAT on books and magazines was reduced from 25 per cent to 6 per cent. The purpose was to increase reading in all sections of the population. A special Book Price Commission was appointed to follow and examine price trends and to work for an enhancement of reading in all groups of the Swedish population. But what form of reading are the BPC talking about? With a theoretical point of departure in the theory of power and discourse by Michel Foucault the aim of this thesis is to explore if there is an existing discourse about reading and, if so, how this discourse is operating in the BPC reports.

The manufacturing industry is currently in a short-term downturn while the competition is increasing. The result of this is that companies must find new ways to bring out their products. Traditional competitive strategies, such as low pricing, is not sufficient today as the customer is inquiring something more than just a good product. Higher demands are presented on an accurate, well functional, communication between customer and companies, as this has become an important strategic factor in achieving long-term profitability.The aim of this independent project was to analyze and evaluate the communication process between a company and its sales companies.In order to illustrate this process, a case study was carried out at Alfa Laval, their sales companies and employees at their distribution center in Tumba. In order to see the differences in attitudes between the management, the sales companies and the employees regarding communication and involvement a gap analysis were used.The theoretical part of the study considers theories about business mission, communication, involvement, quality and creating value.The result showed that a smaller gap exists between the sales companies and the management while a slightly larger one exists between the employees and the management.

This is a project about creating new patterns from childhood memories of patterns. I havebeen reaserching the possibility to add further value to a pattern in terms of memories, stories,associations and feelings.The goal has been to create new patterns from other peoples memories of patterns. It hasalso been my purpose to develop my skills and feel more comfortable in the creating of patterns.The questions at issu has been:How can I tell a story with a pattern?How can I communicate a feeling or a mood with a pattern?How does our memory image and an interpretation effect the process and the end result?I interviewed nine people. The questions during the interview was:Your name and age?Where was the pattern you?r going to talk about placed?How did it look like?What kind of feelings or emotions do you connect with this pattern?Someting else you whant to tell about the pattern?I created five patterns and during the process with the interviews I realised the importance ofshowing the stories in the end result.

A study of how pseudoscience is used in modern science as a method for dividing people into groups depending on their extraction with focus on the book The Bell Curve written by Charles Murray and Richard J. Herrstein..

Martina Haag?s method of self-mockery used in her chronicles is characterized by her wish to live up to various ideals. This essay brings out the subversive power of self-deprecatory hu-mor expressed in her book Hemma hos Martina. The author?s strategies and kinds of humor are being studied, leading up to what this humor accomplishes.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine how college library managers perceive shelves of book reservation system in an integrity perspective. Privacy is an important part of everyday life in the society of today and according to some people, for example a former library lawyer in the Swedish Royal Library, these shelves conflicts with the Swedish law of Secrecy (Sekretesslagen 9 kap. 22 §). I am therefore interested in how they perceive this system: what weaknesses and strengths it has, why they implemented it, how they have interpreted this law. To answer this I have used a qualitative method called phenomenography and done interviews with five college library managers.

The aim of this thesis was to investigate the accessibility and activities for dyslectic adults in public libraries in the Swedish county of Södermanland. The questions that were to be answered were four; to what extent do the libraries provide book material and special computer software? To what extent do activities occur? Does the library staff have awareness and knowledge of dyslexia and of activities for dyslectics? What are the obstacles for good service for dyslectic library users? Two methods were used. As a first step, a questionnaire was sent to thirty public libraries. The questionnaire elicited a low level of response, but gave in spite of this an overview of the situation for dyslectics in the libraries of the county.

Clarice Lispectors is one of Latin Americas most famous writers, and she wrote a number of books during her lifetime. Her novel Stream of Life (Água viva), which came out in 1973 and was translated into Swedish in 2007, is considered to be one of Lispectors most difficult texts to read. It consists of several fragments put together into one text; however the text has no traditional narrative or structure. It is the flow of moments that moves the text forward, as it is written down by the protagonist in the book.The primary aim of this essay is to examine how the protagonist in Stream of Life through different means, as the moment, the description, the word and the variations, creates an active participation in the formation of its identity. I will discuss the moment and its act of constructing the book?s circular structure, which is of importance.

The aim of this thesis is to mediate to the reader an image of Chinese classification systems and in what way the methods of classification have progressed during time. The tradition of classification in China is very old and dates back more than two thousand years, but it wasnt until the downfall of the dynastic era in the beginning of the 20th century, that Chinese libraries and methods of classification were modernized. This thesis also identifies the development of Chinese librarianship which is of old age since Chinese literature stretches three thousand years back. The main question is in what way the values of three different philosophies are reflected in five classification systems compiled between 1953-1975. The three philosophies are Daoism, Confucianism and Maoism/Mao Zedong Thought.

Children's library's primary task is to encourage children to read. Promoted readingleads to increased reading skills. A common method for this purpose is booktalk. This studyaims to examine how children?s librarians work with booktalk aimed towards children andhow it can be developed as a working method to support the library's reading promotionactivities.

The aim of this thesis is to describe how to work with the development of language by reading aloud. I have chosen to look at the reading aloud project "Boksnurran" Book Wheel to see if it has influenced the daily work with reading in preschool. My questions are: How do they work with reading in preschool? Is the reading environment suitable? How do the staff describe their booktalks? What problems do they encounter? What can be improved? The thesis is based on qualitative interviews. Those interviewed have participated in "Book Wheel".

Summary:The Clinical Training Center at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala uses new methods for educating and training veterinary students. Among these methods are computer programs. The aim of this study was to create an interactive application based on data from horses CT-scanned at the Center for Medical Image and Visualization at Linköping University Hospital. The purpose of this application is for veterinary students to be able to use multidimensional visualization to study equine anatomy. The resulting application named "EQUINE VIRTUAL ANATOMY - Flash in the Tunnel" consists of data from six heads, one left foreleg and a wooden dalahorse.

The aim of the study is to show how children and adults are described in three picture books, examining how children and adults are portrayed in text-and-picture narrative and how this has changed over time. We have analysed how the characters in the books are presented and how the representation of children and adults has changed in our own times.The material for the study consists of three picture books from different periods, with the focus on how children and adults are described as the common point of departure. The analysed picture books are: Tomtebobarnen (Beskow 1919), Aja baja, Alfons Åberg! (Bergström 1972) and Snäll (Dahle 2008).We have arrived at the conclusion that a text-and-picture narrative is in very large measure a reflection of the outlook on children, childhood and child rearing at the time when the book was published. The result shows that the greatest change that has happened is that parents? and adults? dominance in the books has declined over the years, and that children have been given a more prominent role.

Abstrakt:Syftet med föreliggande akademiska studie är att kartlägga vad självskadebeteende innebär, varför det utförs och vilken behandling det finns att få. Resultatet som togs fram genom kvalitativa, semistrukturerade djupintervjuer, både med personer som själva har erfarenhet av självskadebeteende (de primära informanterna) och yrkeskvinnor (de sekundära informanterna) som kommer i kontakt med det. Resultatet går ej att generalisera då antalet informanter inte kan representera hela populationen. Goffman förklarar i boken ?Jaget och maskerna? på ett bra sätt individernas agerande och handlingar i samhället och Mead beskriver med sin teori ?The self? de primära informanternas personlighet.

During the 17th century the production and distribution of printed works increased in Stockholm and Uppsala. However, all works that the publisher wanted to print, did not reach the reader. This thesis aimed to show when, where and how printed books and dissertations did not reach the reader. To achieve this aim, aspects of several well known models showing systems of book production and distribution were combined and adapted to suit Swedish conditions in the 17th century. This combined model focused on processes of selection and was presented and used as a theoretical approach.