The aim of this Masters thesis is to investigate how the image of the Public library is described in the Swedish national library politics, and compare it with the image given of the public library in the Danish national library politics. The method used for this analysis is a comparative discourse analysis of the homepages produced by the Swedish central government Regeringen and Kulturrådet and its Danish counterpart Kulturministeriet and Biblioteksstyrelsen. Theories on postmodernity have been used to analyze how the Swedish and the Danish central governments image of the Public library corresponds with a changing society and the changing behaviour of the public library users. Our analysis concludes that the traditional view of the Public library as an institution mainly concerned with literature and reading still is of great significance in the discourse of the Swedish central government. In contrast, the Danish central government presents a more postmodern view of the public library as an institution that is part of the Information- and the Knowledge society.

The aim of this thesis is to find out how users and libraries are constructed at public library websites in Sweden from a web 2.0 perspective. We discuss the development of public libraries in Swedish history and the change from an system oriented perspective to a individual oriented perspective and how these perspectives correspond to needs of the library user. We also discuss the concept of web 2.0 and library 2.0. These concepts are open for different interpretations. Some writers believe that web 2.0 and library 2.0 is something radically new and that it will change the public libraries, while other writers claim that these concepts is just a marketing plan.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the debate in library journals and in official reports on the subject of library education in Sweden. We focus on two periods: the period just before the year 1972 ? when the library education was transformed into being occupationally-oriented and the period just before the year 1993, when the library education was transformed into being ?academised?. This Master?s thesis shows that the debate and the arguments among initiated people in the library world have had some impact on how the library education was transformed later on.

This thesis seeks to investigate the relationship between municipal policy for housing supply and the planning of new housing in Sweden. Through a case study of Göteborg municipality and a comparative content analysis of Göteborgs policy for housing supply and a number of plans featuring housing the analysis seeks to investigate the effect of policy for housing supply as a tool for securing the demand for housing in the Swedish municipalities. The thesis also seeks to discuss its findings using theory concerning the implementation of policy and the general planning situation for Swedish municipalities today. The result of the analysis shows that most plans fail to regulate most of the content suggested in the policy for housing supply, particularly regarding aspects such as pricing, type of housing and type of ownership. The result also points towards a relationship regarding the prevalence of municipal land contracts and compatibility to policy for housing supply as well as a connection between how extensive the plans are in their proposed land use and their compatibility with policy for housing supply.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine the discourses of concepts related to diversity and ethnicity in Swedish cultural policy. It focuses on how the society is presented in different contexts and how people with a different ethnic origin than the majority, are represented in the cultural policy of the Swedish State. The study is restricted to concern immigrants. Six governmental cultural policy documents, reaching over a time period of eight years 1995-2003 are examined as follows: Which key terms are used in the presentations? Which contexts and discourses can be distinguished? Have the discourses changed over the time period examined, and if so, how? The theoretical starting point in the thesis is the discourse perspective of Laclau and Mouffe.

To integrate environmental concerns into non-environmental policy making has become an important policy objective within the European Union. This essay investigates policy instruments in use to achieve environmental policy integration in the EU's transport sector respectively fisheries sector. The point of departure is a theoretical discussion about governance and the use of different policy instruments for environmental management at the EU-level. The focal point is the argumentation that regulatory policy instruments alone cannot achieve environmental policy integration satisfactory. By using Jordan et al's classification of so called "new" environmental policy instruments (market-based instruments, voluntary agreements and ecolabels) as complements to regulatory measures, the essay investigates whether the first-mentioned are used within the two sectors.

The purpose of this essay is to examine how a newly built library and an old library from the sixties work out of an experience and feeling oriented view. Are the fundamental conditions of an old library compatible with the library standards of today? To be able to carry out this examination we have chosen two rather small Swedish libraries. One is the public library of Hässleholm, which opened in the year 2000, and the other is the public library of Kristianstad opened in 1965. The material used to attain the purpose of the study consists of literature studies and qualitative observations and interviews.

Since its ratification in Sweden in 1990, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) has become a part of the law of nations and intended to suffuse the public sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine how children?s library consultants work to implement the CRC in children?s library activities in Sweden. We have tried to discover whether the CRC is basic in the work of children?s library consultants or if is rather employed to strengthen certain areas or projects.

The purpous of this master?s thesis is to explore how the swedish public library evolved between 1890-1911, before the state implemented the library reform in 1912. The material used to cunduct the study concists mainly of texts published during the time frame of the thesis in the form of books, booklets and articles from Folkbiblioteksbladet, a journal dedicated to the subject of the swedish public library.Drawing upon Habermas theory of the structural transformation of the public sphere and Bourdieus theories about taste as social distinction and symbolic capital, the thesis seeks to show how the public participated in the evolvement of the public library and which aspects of society that contributed to the public library?s establishment as an institution. The findings are also discussed in relation to previous research of the history of the Swedish public library.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the library habits of young people, age 15 to 24. Our empirical data are gathered in a survey distributed to 104 young men and women at three different public libraries. The questions are about how young people use the public library, what media and services they use and whether or not they are content with what the public library can offer them. In our analysis we have compared our results to previous research and used a model by Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen to determine how they use the library.

A large part of research about libraries and library buildings in Sweden has been focused on how the building looks not how it functions with the library. The aim with this master?s thesis is to study how a library building is functioning and how its users are experiencing it. This is studied in three libraries, Kungliga tekniska högskolans bibliotek, Sambiblioteket in Härnösand and Vitterhetsakademiens bibliotek. With the questions of how they were planed, what did the libraries want from the new building and which of these demands were realized.

This masters thesis is a study of official political documents in order to discuss privatisation and the Swedish public libraries. In the 1990s public libraries became placed on contractors, and that was said to be one form of privatisation. The main issue for this study concerns driving forces and obstacles for privatisation of public libraries. Another issue concerns advantages and risks. We will also discuss how the future of public libraries will be in this context.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to understand public library users' perceptions of librarians' attitudes to users and professional knowledge. The purpose was also to investigate the relative importance to the user of pleasant or a knowledgeable librarian. As a theoretical framework we use theory from business economy where the experience of the user is in focus. Answers were sought to the following questions: How do users perceive librarians attitudes to users? How do users perceive librarians professional knowledge? How do users want to be treated by public librarians? What kind of knowledge should public librarians have, according to users? We interviewed twelve students in university education that are users of public libraries.

As the numbers of immigrants to Sweden and the EU are ever increasing even the right-wing populist parties grow faster in number. Sweden, Germany and France are three European countries that receive 90 percent of all asylum seekers and should therefore have a well-established and talked about immigration policy one can think. Yet the political parties in Sweden do not mention much about the immigration policy apart from the political party Sweden Democrats. This study aims to analyze eight different political parties in the Swedish parliament through a textual analysis to see what kind of immigration policy they share. Carl Dahlström has a theory to determine what type of policy a certain party has and whether they want to assimilate or integrate immigrants.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in which aspects the public library is affected by its local community. This is re-searched by means of an exemplified case study of a Swedish public library in which we analyze governing documents and the library website with respect to environmental scanning and mar-keting of library services.The research questions are: How are the local community?s demands on the public li-brary being described in the governing document? How is the public library?s response to the demands of the local community being described in the operational plan? How are the demands of the local community, as shown in the governing document and the operational plan, re-flected in the marketing of library services on the library website?Our conclusions are that:The demands of the local community are described in a general fashion in the governing document, but there is a lack of concrete political guidelines.The public library's response to the demands of the local commu-nity is described to some length in the operational plan, but not with respect to economical factors.The demands of the local community are reflected to some length in the marketing of library services on the library website. Many of the overall themes that we identify in the governing document and the operational plan can be found in the marketing directed towards important target groups..