The main purpose with this MA thesis is to examine how visually impaired, disabled and people with dyslexia define service quality at the public library of Linköping. The method that has been used is focus group interviews. A focus group consists of four to eight people who are joined together, without knowing each other before, to discuss a certain subject. The aim is to get a wide spread of answers. A secondary purpose is to examine how this method works.

The study reported has been conducted in care service guided by the Swedish law LSS( LSS- act concerning support and service for the disabled). The aim of this study is to examine the experiences of the personnel who have attended the Taktipro introductory course with special focus on how they describe the possible effects this may have had on their daily attendance to their special needs users.The method used is a qualitative method of enquiry, based on interview questions sent by mail to all the participants of the Taktipro introductory course. The result shows that the personnel have a positive view on skills in progress and that this program has facilitated the contact between personnel and their special needs users. An awareness about the importance of physical contact has also been revealed as well as an awareness of their own impact on situations at work. The result also indicates that the personnel feel that they have been able to improve the well being for the special needs users. .

The social network services (SNS) on the Internet are becoming more common, and are starting to have a higher range of users, which is affecting Internet marketing. We (the authors) have a feelingthat a growing online marketing within social networks could interrupt the order of social standards. That is why we in this paper have tried to figure out what position marketing has ? and might have ? within SNS, and what impact it will have on social relations.During qualitative interviews along with both representatives of public relation offices as well as with SNS users, we became aware of the occurring strategies of online marketing, and the usersunderstanding of it. In the information from the interviews, we found some interesting contradictions on which this paper underlies.

The aim of this master?s thesis is to examine the discourses about Malmö public library that can be identified in several documents published by the library, articles, and various WebPages. Furthermore, our intention is to study the relation between the library?s identity, image and profile. The questions posed in the study are: Which identity discourses are Malmö public library giving expression for? What kind of conflicts between these discourses can we find? How is the identity, image and profile of the library in relation to one another? How does Malmö public library profile and market itself as a non-profit organization? Our theoretical and methodological building ground is in the discourse analytical field, with Enesto Laclau?s and Chantal Mouffe?s theories about discourse and society, as a starting-point.

The underlying purpose of this study is to see whether a library focused solely on providing literature in other languages than Swedish serves as a unifying, integrating force, or as an agent for division and exclusion. The study focuses on the International Library in Stockholm. The authors have created a profile of the visitors of the selected library, concerning their characteristics, their library habits and their perceptions of the International library. This profile has then been compared with the staff?s perception of the visitors as a group.

The aim of this master thesis is to examine which criteria are generally used to guide pub­lic librarians in their acquisitions' decision. The study went ahead in France, principally at La Bibliotheque municipale de Lyon. It also includes a view of some special library services in the social field.Twenty persons were interviewed and an attempt was made to divide their answers into three sections: acquisition routines and criteria for media purchase, how to receive the library visi­tors and their influence on the acquisitions, and, finally, the librarians' own opinions on the matter. One important question was whether censorship is applied and in that case, would it be a deliberately way of acting or rather a spontaneous reaction, more or less unconscious.Censorship in real or manifested through a self-preservative reaction turned out to be a factor closely dependant on the library's financial situation. Many librarians affirmed they would find useful some kind of a written practical library acquisition policy..

?Facebook has become as natural as having a phone? The use of social media in three libraries in the Umeå region ? an evaluationSocial media has come to be an integral part of people?s everyday life, as well as the business world in terms of communication and marketing. More and more libraries also embark in the use of social media, and the purpose of this study is to evaluate the use of social media in three libraries in the Umeå region. The libraries all use Facebook as their current, primary social media. Thus this study focuses partly on the analysis of the content on each library?s Facebook page, and partly on the experiences of the responsible librarians. The evaluation is based on a mix of existing tools in evaluating social media that are relevant in a library context.

The purpose of this thesis is to describe and analyse the development of the public library in the district of Österåker during a period of 1958-1983. The main goals have been to identify the crucial events in the history of the library within their historical context and to analyse the factors that have been important for the development: financing, location, staffing, stock of books, book-lending level and different activities for children, youngsters and adults. The consideration has been taken to reasons and consequences of these events. The hermeneutic interpretation model of interaction between parts and wholes, between reasons and results is the basic method in this research which leans mainly upon local archives in Österåker. The public library in Österåker was established in 1952 as a fusion of previously existing small libraries: the parish library in Östra Ryd, the Labour Movement?s library and the temperance movement?s library.

This is a two years master?s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies, which purpose is to find out what ideas there are about school libraries and to get an idea of how informants interpret the new Education Act, which requires all students to have access to school libraries. Another intention of this paper is to highlight the potential rural-related attitudes of the responents. The study includes the sparsely populated municipality of Krokom and is based on interviews with librarians, the school director, principals and politicians who work there. The theoretical basis for this paper is Loertscher?s model för school libraries and a centerperiphery perspective.

Randomness is a complex area of computer science, where only pseudo random numbers are possible to generate algorithmically.This report presents established algorithms for random number generation by conducting a basic study of relevant literature, while testing distribution and speed of the algorithms contained within the C++11 Random library. The results are compared to the algorithm XORShift and a modified version of it. The study shows that the modified algorithm passes all tests in Small Crush, andthat the run time is shorter than for those in the Random library. The conclusion is that it is possible to, with simple means, modify an algorithm to outperform the algorithms of the C++11 Random library..

A constantly increasing number of magazines are using the Internet as a business channel. One of these is Allt om Mat (All about Food). Together with expressen.se, Allt om Mat developed a food website, alltommat.se, which was introduced at the beginning of 2008. In this essay we investigate how alltommat.se developed its service concept. Further, we look at how this development has influenced and been influenced by relations among the three actors and the users.

Health on the Internet is a growing subject and many different organisations and companies offer customers various kinds of medical functions on the web. A common service is to offer users to ask questions and get answers from doctors cooperating with the health sites. There is however little knowledge of how much the health sites actually are used, and by whom. Several authorities and organisations both in Sweden, Europe and in the USA are investigating whether it is necessary to bring forward a certificating authority with the right to judge and examine all the health sites on the web. WHO, the World Health Organisation, proposed a solution for this, which was refused.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the view on the personal encounter between staff and visitors in public libraries in order to detect possible differences between the two groups in order to see if the personal encounter as such could be used in order to market libraries. We believe that social competence must interact with the initial personal encounter in order for the visitor to experience the visit as positive. We have based the theoretical framework on Erving Goffman?s theory on social interaction, as well as on Christian Grönroos? theory on quality of service and marketing. We use the following questions: How do library staff view the personal encounter? How do library visitors view the personal encounter? How does the library staff?s treatment affect the visitor?s view of the library?Are there any differences in view between visitors and staff concerning the personal encounter? If so, what kind of differences are they? Using qualitative interviews, we have interviewed nine visitors and six staff members at two public libraries.

The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate three search engines with regard to retrieval effectiveness of information specific to Swedish users. Coverage and the precision in result descriptions are also examined. The three selected search engines are Google, MSN Search and Svesök. 30 queries were tested against the search engines and the first 20 result descriptions and results were judged for relevancy. Relevancy was judged by a binary scale.

Today it?s common that companies and organizations are facing several challenges and problems when it comes to making their IT-environment more efficient. Some of these are the management of user?s computers and file security. Comput-er users are often tied to their personal computer due to personal programs and files.