The aim with this Master's thesis is to study the debate that takes place in the local community when a public library branch is threatened by closedown through the local newspapers. Through this it is our aim to understand why the debate takes place, and why so many people gets concerned with it. By relating this debate to contemporary research of library- and information science, and the discussion in three major Swedish library journals, we have found the answers to these questions. By studying the debate, we found six subjects that where essential for this study. These were Politics and economics, Urban and rural districts, Democracy and accessibility, The service of the library, The meeting place and To replace a closed down library.

A debate on environmental issues and food safety has been ongoing in Sweden and it is suggested that consumers' are seeking local produce instead of global and exotic foods. Moreover, studies show that the consumers? positive attitude towards local produce does not reflect their actions. The purpose with this thesis is to contribute to a better understanding of the dissonance between the consumer?s attitudes and actual behaviour towards local produce.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the lived experiences and treatment of Muslim women in their encounters with the social services. The primal themes for this study was: How does Muslim women experience the treatment of their case in the social services in a situation of need? How can the encounter and experience with the social services affect the clients trust in the social services?  What is the ideal treatment of women with a Muslim identity by the social services?The aim of this study was to investigate and capture the respondents lived perceptions and experiences with the social services, and thus the qualitative interview methodology was implemented to answer the research questions and hypotheses. Seven interviews with Muslim women were conducted in various districts of Stockholm, a city in northern Sweden. Five of the respondents were of ethnic Swedish origin and two were of other ethic origin.The results show that the majority of the respondents experienced a negative response at least once when in contact with the social services.

Some MNEs encounter frustration or failures when they enter a new market. The main reason is due to a lack of adaptation. There is a lack of theoretical study about the local adaptation phenomenon of Swedish MNEs in China. Most studies are at the level of experience. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out the dimensions subject to local adaptation and their degree for the Swedish MNEs in China.

The subject for this thesis is to examine the portrayal of the local farmer in four different museums in Scania. The purpose is to examine these two questions: 1. Which narrative and museal strategies are used in the portrayal of the local farmer by the local history societies? 2. How do the actors of the local societies relate to the living conditions and hierarchies of the rural society of Scania? The source material consists of guided tours and text material from the museums. The theoretical fields consists of history culture, use of history, historical narrative, museology and rural science act as our theoretical fields. Peter Aronsson, Anna Eskilsson and Maria Bjo?rkroth act as our main theoretical framework. Our research presents two central discourses in the portrayal of the local farmer.

Because of a more globalised world the national states have been forced to make structural changes at both national, regional and local level to cope with different challenges. The regional community has become an important area which has resulted in a policy of more self governing, both for the regional and the local level.The aim of the thesis is to study the relation between regional and local level in the partnerships organisation. To fulfil the aim of the thesis, a case study of Region Skåne is used. The analyse is based on expressions such as cooperation, conflict, power and influence.The result of the thesis confirms that the opinion between the regional and the local level is very different. The representatives from Region Skåne experience the cooperation as quite good because it creates an opportunity for discussions and a possibility to learn from the other actors which in turn creates a qualification in the exchange of knowledge.

Children that are taken care of for institutional care by the social services are unprivileged as a group. When society takes over the parenting role, it forces local governments and other accountable authorities to guarantee these children satisfactory support and good care according to each child's needs. The aim of this thesis is to analyze and discuss problems with implementation in policy processes when authorities incorporate. From the normative standpoint of legal security and the United Nations Children's Convention, this thesis investigates the consequences of interaction between two Swedish supervisory authorities for the social services: Socialstyrelsen and länsstyrelserna. To fulfill the aim I will investigate the approach taken by the authorities and the work division between Socialstyrelsen and länsstyrelserna.

The purpose of this study is to examine the accessibility with public transportation in the case of the Umeå Region in northern Sweden. This is done by GIS network analysis where both access to transit stops, as well as access by public transport from stops to destinations is examined. An accessibility index is created from transit frequency and travel times to destinations. The results is compared with population register data to calculate what shares of the population has which levels of accessibility with public transportation. In the Umeå Region there are different levels of accessibility by public transport for different parts of the region, where transit stops in the most densely populated areas has the highest levels of accessibility, as well as stations along the railroads.

To be able to maintain an adequate ITservice for various users and needs,more municipalities are looking at thepossibility for mergers of local ITdepartments. One solution for mergingmultiple services/functions and creatingsynergy opportunities is called SharedService Center (SSC). The concept of SSCis that the administrative serviceitself becomes a core activity withinthe organization. The aim of this thesisis to provide municipalities who areconsidering a merging of their local ITdepartments with recommendations on howto design the Shared IT Service Center.Recommendations are outlined based on ananalysis of IT-management literature,reports and by conducting a study onthree ongoing collaborations.The conclusions drawn from the studysuggest guidelines for the design of aShared IT Service Center formunicipalities. These are as following:Create a vision associated with aspecific and structured target state.Identify needs for different targetgroups in municipalities and set acommon standard.Create a clear and practical model/SLAappearance of the cooperation andagreement.Ensure the individual municipalitiescommissioning skills in order to notlose it in the context of a common IToperation.Find an organization that is democraticfor member municipalities andfacilitates long-term partnership.Specify the operation and maintenance sothat it can be regulated and controlledEstablish a common help desk.Establish a common standard andconsolidated infrastructure before theintroduction of a common technology platform..

This report is prepared in cooperation with Södra, Norra Halland SBO. The survey gives the members an opportunity to influence the services and also gives the staff at Södra a hint of the member?s demands.Södra is the largest co-operative forest company in Sweden with over 50 000 members and is divided into 31 areas. Norra Halland SBO is one of them.A questionnaire was sent to the members and 516 (or 53 %) of them answered. Of the respondents 68 % were between 60 and 69 years of age.

The purpose of the study is to examine and analyze the relation between the existence of global companies and given support to immigrant- owned companies with large cultural difference from public services. This helps answering the question "Which affect does the existence of local dominating companies have on the establishment of small companies owned by immigrants with large cultural differences?" This has been accomplished through a field study containing twelve interviews with small companies in two different cities and two interviews with the community officials in each city. The research was thereby narrowed to only treat the two cities in Sweden in order to examine the relation between public services support to small immigrant-owned companies and how the immigrants experience the support from them. The analyze was made due to a handful of theories such as the The network theory IP model, Hofstede's 4+1 model and the Product Life Cycle.

This is a paper about the social services waiting rooms. Our aim with the study has been to:?Describe and problematize the physical environment in social services waiting rooms. A wider purpose is to lift the question about the waiting room as a significant part of peoples encounter with the social services.? To be able to achieve this purpose, we have used two questions: What does the physical waiting room environment look like in social services in Stockholms län? How can we understand and problematize the physical environment factors impact on people who visits these environments? We have observed and photographed ten waiting rooms in ten different social services in Stockholms län.

Some MNEs encounter frustration or failures when they enter a new market. The main reason is due to a lack of adaptation. There is a lack of theoretical study about the local adaptation phenomenon of Swedish MNEs in China. Most studies are at the level of experience. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to find out the dimensions subject to local adaptation and their degree for the Swedish MNEs in China.

The background of this study stemmed from the notion that the majority of homeless women with substance abuse, most of all, wanted a secured place of their own to stay. Few involved professionals agreed and instead of perceiving housing as a human right the women were mostly offered various types of short-term social housing. The purpose of this study was thus to examine and analyze how professionals attached to the social services and public housing companies in Gothenburg explained that homeless women with substance abuse were excluded from accommodation on the open housing market. The qualitative approach included ten interviews with eleven professionals in Gothenburg. The theoretical framework consisted mainly of Bourdieu's analytical concepts of field, doxa as well as social, economic and cultural, alongside symbolic capital.

A company library can only exist if it contributes to a positive result for the company. As endusers are beginning to perform searches on the Internet and have access to databases and electronic documents via their desktops it becomes important for company librarians to thoroughly think through what services should be offered to the users so that the library still contributes to the company s profit. The aim of this dissertation was to try to define the services that the company library offers its users having in mind the changes that have taken place concerning the availability of information. I also wanted to explore whether the librarians had the necessary competence to perform the services offered. Six information specialists were interviewed to give their view on the services their libraries offered.