When Sweden acceded to the European Union in 1995 the term social economy was introduced to the Swedish context, gradually replacing the term civil society. This replacement can be seen as an indicator of a changing meaning of what the concept of civil society used to stand for.The aim of this essay is to study if it is possible to identify changing perceptions of the role of civil society for democracy in Sweden in government bills between 2002 and 2008, and, if so, what effect does this have on the delineation between the civil society and the government.An analytical model is proposed consisting of two dimensions which both capture the roles of civil society for democracy and the model examines how those roles relate to the government.The conclusion is that the government still sees the main function of civil society as a democratic school and a change agent for democracy. However, there is strong evidence to suggest that the civil society is increasingly regarded as more of a welfare producer than a fosterer of democracy..

This Bachelor?s thesis is related to the area within library and information studies that focuses on information seeking and information practices. The study deals with how politically engaged young people seek information in relation to their political interests. The purpose of the study is to create an understanding of the roles that different forms of information-related activities play within the framework of political interest and of the feelings, experiences and challenges that such activities may give rise to for those involved. The study also discusses purposes and motivation for information seeking and use in political engagement.

Information overload occurs when the amount of information exceeds the individual s capacity to efficiently process and use the information available. In this situation information instead of being an asset becomes a load. This interview study deals with college students experiences of information overload when working on their thesis. Focus lies on use of Internet based information resources. The main result was that the students experienced information overload in specific situations and steps of the process.

This essay discusses the students? thoughts about the teacher's response to their gender identity. The students discuss their right to have an intergender identity which means that they don?t identify themselves in the traditional sexes, man and woman, and the gender role each category has. They want to be called with a neutral pronoun and not be seen like boys or girls.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the prerequisites for children?s participation in the activities of the public library as expressed by six children?s librarians. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were carried out to investigate how the librarians interpreted the concept of participation and viewed power issues between children and adults. Further, difficulties and possibilities experienced in working with children?s participation and manifestations of children?s participation in everyday library work were also investigated.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine children's communication and interaction during story time at the public library. The aim is also to examine how to develop the story time ? in terms of participation and equality ? at a specific library.Action research was used as a research strategy and participant observation, log, tutoring and interviews as methods to collect data. Since action research is done on the basis of practice, a significant collaboration with the librarian and the participant children is taking place within this study.Research from the fields of Library and Information Science, Education and Childhood Sociology form the interdisciplinary research area to which this study links. The theoretical framework consists of theory and concepts from the Socio-cultural Perspective, Poststrucuralist Feminism and Childhood Sociology.

The digital era has led to technical advances that have transformed the role of the public library from being a place that is used only through physical visits and material, into also being a virtual space that can be accessed by users from outside the library through Internet-based access to e-media such as e-books and streamed or downloadable audiobooks.The aim of this study is to examine how the role of public libraries in Stockholm County has changed in the process of developing into digital libraries: how this has affected their organisation, work methods and strate- gies, as well as their accessibility. The theoretical framework of the study draws on Michael K. Bucklands theory of information accessibility, which is based on six factors of access that are determined by different types of barriers. The methodology is based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. Primary data was gathered through an empirical survey, which consisted of a structured questionnaire distributed to most of the public libraries in Stockholm County and semi-structured interviews with selected librarians and experts for further in-depth understanding.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The purpose of this Bachelor thesis is to examine how user-friendly the OPAC of the Märsta public library is considered to be.Theoretical basis are HCI and Allwoods definition of usability. Issues are: Is the OPAC suited to its task? Is the OPAC user-friendly? How well does a user accept the OPAC? and What degree of competence is shown by users of the OPAC? The source material consists of six interviews in the form of .avi files. The method I have chosen is qualitative semi-structured interview form. The result is that, based on Carl Martin Allwood?s defini-tion and with exception for the using of help-resources, the usability of Märsta?s library OPAC can be considered less good..

The main purpose of this masters thesis is to investigate how male public librarians experience working in a female-dominated area by interviewing eight male public librarians. We want to find if our informants have experienced, or are experiencing, that the library users react differently to the male librarians, as opposed to the female librarians, with focus on possible prejudices. Besides this we want to investigate if the male librarians have had any reactions from their colleagues based on the fact that they are men working in a female profession. We are using three theories in this thesis. The first theory is based on an article by Christine L.

The aim of this study is to examine how two Kenyan school's approaches gender roles, by what the curriculum says and by how the teachers way of teaching are effecting the creation of gender roles. The aim is further to find out what the Kenyan school settings are, according to gender and equality, and how these are implemented in practice. This was examined through interviews at two local schools in Kenya, with five practicing teachers from grade one through grade six. This work compares the respondents' answers to the research that is related to the topic. Because of lack in the research about Kenya, the research has been based on mostly Swedish investigations.

This bachelor thesis explores the library collaboration "HelGe-libraries" goals, guidelines and strategies for their resource sharing of library books and digital resources. The questions asked were: What does the resource sharing look like when it comes to media and services? What goals and guidelines do they have for the resource sharing? What common strategies do they have for the resource sharing? What challenges have they encountered with resource sharing and how have they dealt with them?The theoretical framework consists of Jennifer Rowleys theory of innovation strategies for libraries and Rosabeth Moss Kanters theory on the art of alliances. The method used to collect material was interviews and document analysis. Four informants were interviewed.My study concludes that the "HelGe-libraries" has formulated goals for their resource sharing and that the resource sharing is connected to their goals.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to do a comparativecase study between a public library in Sweden and one in England. Our aim is to examine what factors affect alibrarian in charge of purchasing fiction for adults and to what degree. We have used two methods of study, specifically semi-constructed interviews with two librarians and text analysis of policies in place at each library respectively. Our research questions share the above mentioned context and should therefore be read with that backdrop:-How is selection and purchase covered in the policies?-What selection criteria are used by the respondents?-What differences are there regarding the decision making? -How can the viewpoints be explained?Our analytical framework was based on three arguments namely market demand, quality and social inclusion when examining our material.