The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how the research library of Linnæus University is used by students as a meeting place. Building upon Putnam's theory of bonding and bridging social capital and Audunson's conception of high and low intensive meeting places, it aims to explore the research library's potential for creating social capital and thus strengthening both learning and democracy in a university context. Borrowing part of the survey design from a study conducted as part of the Norwegian PLACE project, this study collects responses from 134 students as to their use of the library as a meeting place. The results show that the Linnæus University library is used for a variety of meetings of both high and low intensity, why it should provide a good setting for the creation of social capital. There seems to be a connection between how often one visits the library, as well as to which department one belongs, and how one uses the library as a meeting place.

This thesis is structured as a combined empirical and literary study. The aim is to investigate how children at the age of 11-12 years reflect on their readings of fiction and how these reflections relate to the librarians' perspective of a child's reading ability and reading development. Qualitative interviews with children and librarians constitute the empirical part. Research and theories are compared to the empirical part then placed into a more extensive context. How do children at the age of 11-12 years old reflect upon their reading of fiction and how do librarians relate themselves to this age? An analysis using interviews, research and theories is used to answer these questions.

This master thesis deals with events, dynamics and problems of mediated information seeking within the context of a new information service called "Book a librarian". The study, based on a survey and interviews both in academic and public libraries and participant observations in academic libraries, has its theoretical base in the cognitive theory of information retrieval interaction. The cognitive view is used to throw light upon the need of an ongoing dialogue during the session in order to detect the information needs of the user and to conduct a successful retrieval of information. The communicative interaction is seen as threepart interaction between the intermediary, the user and the information system, where the current cognitive states of all three participants are involved. The study shows that the cognitive obstacles for a successful mediation and information retrieval are mostly connected to participants current knowledge of the subject and of the retrieval techniques.

The response to many on-going or emerging conflicts since the beginning of the 21st century has been different forms of multinational complex peace operations. Civil-military relations are a commonly studied field that traditionally has its focus on nations. This study intends, in the context of organisations, to test the correlation between a civil-military approach and outcome in complex peace operations. A hypothesis has been deduced from researcher Robert Egnell?s theory on complex peace operations, that states that: UN peace operations with an integrated civil-military approach are more successful in achieving their goals than peace operations with a divided approach.

This study is about organizing major sporting events. Sporting events? numerous positive outcomes for the hosting region has resulted in a growing number and size of sporting events globally. The aim of this study was therefore to provide further knowledge about how organizations in major sport events practically and strategically operate and how processes related to organization and leadership can contribute to the success of the event. The study focuses the context of a Swedish national multi-sport event hosted and held by three different cities, three different years.

My study was conducted to provide a deeper understanding of the identity of employee soldiers in the armed forces and their experience of their role in the military context. To describe and identify the soldier's identity formation, values and norms working in group processes are taken into account. As the individual identifies her or himself whit the group, the various phenomena as hostility to other military groups arise. The individuals weld together with other group members to form strong normative relationships within the group. Through a qualitative research approach eight soldiers in a regiment in western Sweden were interviewed, four of them were group executives or deputy group leaders and others were ordinary soldiers.

The main purpose of this Master?s thesis is to explore university librarians? thoughts about the future. The analytical focus is thus on the librarians? representations of the future. The theoretical framework used is narrative theory with a social constructionist viewpoint.

This thesis work involves a quantitative study concerning secondary school students' understanding of older Swedish words in the lyrics in the Lucia song written by Elmfors way back in 1919th. The text has some old words and phrases that today's high school students do not really understand. The study includes surveys of two different classes in high school, a theoretical and a practical program. In some cases students can understand words by the context, but previous research shows results in general weakness in students' existing vocabulary. According to previous research, this is due, inter alia, that young people read and write less today.The results of all students are totally 38%, where the theoretical program has a slightly higher performance.

Sara Lidman?s second novel Hjortronlandet (1955) unfolds in the north of Sweden in the early 20th century. It describes the progress of modernity and the conflicting interests of an old local culture and a new more ?civilised? one. The two cultures are constituted by different value systems and in the novel they are represented by two neighbour communities.

The purpose of this study was to inquire how social workers perceive and describe financial abuse of older persons. Six qualitative interviews were carried out and the assembled data was then categorized and analyzed using a theory considering exercise of power and ageism as a theoretical frame. Previous research has shown that at least 10% of older persons have been exposed to some form of abuse or violence; however, there is a lack of research carried out in a Swedish context regarding financial abuse specifically. The six persons interviewed in this study all presented financial abuse as some kind of violence and as previous research has shown the study suggests that this is an increasing problem. Further research ought to be carried out to increase the awareness of this particular form of abuse and to facilitate discovery and development of measures to prevent financial abuse of older persons.

In this essay, I explore the history of the ideas that have shaped the profession of landscape architecture, in a Swedish context. To this purpose, I have sampled the professional debate on landscape architecture at four points in time. These are the years around 1890, 1930, 1970 and 2010. Drawing on G N Brandt (1920), I make the distinction between two arguably crucial approaches, i . e., naturalism and formalism. By identifying these perspectives, and by dividing the arguments of each time period according to this classification, I am able to compare the course of the debate over time. I take on the task through hermeneutics.

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..

The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative study between the photography?s of Leila Khaled and Shirin Neshat in order to observe if the woman are able to recede from an conventional formation to become the bearer of the veil and not only reduced to that whichneeds to be concealed. From a feministic perspective I have observed how the symbolic of the veil moulds the woman and how the woman in her context moulds the veil.In the description of the news photography of Khaled and the art photography produced by Neshat the mechanisms that lies as a foundation for the modelling of the portraits becomesthe essays primary entrance. Mechanisms that evolve around the creation of the woman as aconcept, a subject shaped for being looked at and the woman?s self-image through others.The textual discourse is visually enhanced through a comparative picture material visually enhanced and explained through photographs by the contemporary artist photographers Cindy Sherman, Catherine Opie, Laurie Simmons, Robert Mapplethorpe and Elin Berge.

This essay is derived from a case study about the SIRA school in Betlehem. SIRA is classified as a special education school with financial support from the Swedish International Relief Association. SIRA acts to provide support for children with reading and writing difficulties in their daily school work.The study's aim to describe the context for SIRA's specialized educational activity. The formulated questions should provide answers to which factors that influence SIRA's work, its goals, development, and the distinguished pedagogical approach.During the research comprehensive interviews were conducted with parties which can influence the way schools operate and provide the necessary support for students. Factors that influence the school's operation are analyzed from a ecological development perspective created by Urie Bronfenbrenner. The theory advocates that a student's development and interaction mainly comes from participating in activities, social roles and relations.This constant process of mutual adaptation between the developing individual and its surrounding environment is to be defined as its own entity. The result shows that SIRA's practice a special educational operation with focus on an approach which strengthens the student's identity and communicational skills..

The aim of the study was to describe parents' experiences of empty nest. The sample consisted of individuals who had experienced one child moving out of the parental home. Data were collected through qualitative semi-structured interviews and were analyzed by using thematic analysis. The thematic analysis revealed four themes, Concerns about the new time in life, Changing roles, Socializing in the family and Testing the relations. Due to the themes participants' stories reveal anxiety facing the time that will come when children takes the step to leave the nest.