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.

With self-hypnosis as a method, I work with levels of consciousness in relation to practice. Focus lies in the relation between a language of materials and an inner experience. How do material expressions function as mediums of a spiritual matter between a beholder and me? The trance functions as a space for a spiritual contact/communication. Abstract images of crystalline glaze on ceramic tiles are direct results of these acts.

Being an architect I create spaces with roof, walls and fl oor. The availability of the essential materials to create such spaces is practically unlimited. The materials also play a significant part to the character of the created space. I hope to contribute to the general understanding of materials as elements in the design of urban spaces by having intensely explored one specific material in depth, pointing out its bad and good qualities. I am of the opinion that the reason for choosing a material shouldn?t be because of a shortage of knowledge, facts or references, but what character you want for the room. When travelling across Europe, it sometimes feels like clay paving is everywhere, but back in Sweden it is almost unseen of in modern landscape architecture.

ganization of knowledge at a museum library: Library of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm in the 20th and the early 21st century [65][pdf.gif] The purpose of this masters thesis is to investigate the organization of knowledge at the Library of the Museum of Ethnography in Stockholm during the 20th and the early 21st century. The investigation is focusing on the development of the organization of knowledge, of the catalogues, of the classification system and of the information retrieval. The thesis examines the factors which force the development of the activity at the library and of the organization of knowledge. The study uses a qualitative approach which is based on investigations of different types of catalogues, of the electronic database, of the classification system, of the subject indexing and on interviews. A describing analysis is used.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to study how librarians experience reference work. We wanted to get a better understanding about librarians assignments through the study. We chose to limit the study to public libraries, and to the south of Sweden. The questions used in our study are: How do librarians interpret the conception of reference work? What values do librarians have concerning reference work? How do librarians experience reference work? How do librarians look at different roles in reference work? We chose to use a fenomenographically inspired method.

This essay investigates the integration of the school library into teaching in one of Sweden?s senior high schools and the effects of the new education act which gives school libraries a stronger standing. A second purpose is to investigate teachers? views on professional responsibility with regard to the development of information literacy. Through an email survey different aspects of library integration are investigated.

The purpose of our master thesis was to investigate how a multicultural society is reflected in childrens books picture books, books for children and young people, published in 2002. We found this issue interesting since children of today experience a change in society, where people of many ethnicities, cultures and religions live together to a greater extent than before. Since children in their everyday life are exposed to these different cultures, we think they also should be exposed to them in the books they read. In order to enhance an understanding of why such books are important to children, especially immigrant children, we have in our thesis included a passage with childrens linguistic development, identification and stereotypes. Other passages concern libraries and their roles in a multicultural society.

This thesis is an investigation of Iranian immigrants and their use of libraries in Sweden. It isbased on a combination of a qualitative and a·quantitative method.Using a qualitative method, I give an outline of the history of lran from ancient times up to the present, as well as the different ethnological groups in Iran and their cultures. The main objective of this part is to clarify the contrasts between Iranian and Swedish cultural, social, linguistic and family structures, and also the characteristics of the crisis that most immigrants go through on their arrival in the new country. The qualitative method also involves structured telephone interviews with eight highly educated Iranians.This method was supplemented by a quantitative study through questionnaires of the attitudes· of lranian immigrants to libraries and reading. Iranians in Sweden turned out to be frequent Iibrary users.

The aim of this bachelor?s thesis is to investigate how the activities of the public library are portrayed by the Swedish press. It poses the following questions: What kinds of public library activities are portrayed in the Swedish press? What image does this depiction purvey to the general public about the societal role of public libraries?A model of four library spaces developed by Skot-Hansen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen, and Jochumsen is used as the theoretical framework for this study. Qualitative content analysis is applied to 173 Swedish newspaper articles that describe public library activities.The analysis reveals that articles about many kinds of public library activities get published in the Swedish press, but that some activities occur more frequently than others.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to investigate issues concerning librarians? view on three genres, (a) popular literature for women, (b) popular literature for men and (c) erotic literature, when choosing what to buy for their libraries. A qualitative method has been used and the empery consists of seven qualitative interviews with altogether eight librarians involved in choosing and buying literature. The theoretical framework is built on theories regarding concepts of hegemony and cultural hegemony; the male sex as norm; taste culture and quality. The results show that three of the libraries in the study have a written purchase policy and that the policies that exist are very general.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine public library and information technology IT discourses to see which relationships are established between them in four library journals. This is done in two steps, where first discourses are defined followed by an analysis of the relationships established between the public library and IT in each discourse. The questions from which the analysis emanates are as follows: What discourses exist around the public library and IT in the library journals? What conceptions of the tasks of the public library are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the tasks of IT are constructed in the discourses? What conceptions of the relationships between the public library and IT are constructed in the discourses? The theoretical and methodological starting-points are found in Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. 37 articles from four library journals Biblioteksbladet, Bibliotek i Samhälle, DIK-forum and Ikoner - are analysed through a model in five phases.

An increased awareness about the global warming has created a demand for more information on how the climate is affected by different activities.This master thesis was initiated by Tricorona, a Swedish company that offers its customers analysis and calculation of their climate impact. Tricorona also supplies climate neutralisation with CERs, in accordance with the Kyoto protocol and controlled by the UN. This work demands updated emission factors for greenhouse gases. An emission factor gives information about the greenhouse gasintensity of a service or a product [kg CO2-eq./ functional unit].The purpose of this thesis is to examine how electricity, district heating, hotels, taxis, food and materials affect the climate and how emission factors for these areas can be calculated.This was done by reviewing and comparing different studies and by interviewing experts. The information was evaluated and recommendations on calculations and emission factors were made.The consumption of energy is the main source of greenhouse gas emissions for district heating, electricity, hotels, taxis and materials.

The municipality of Falkenberg is a result of a unification of several smaller municipalities in 1971, each one with a small library. This left Falkenberg with an unusual large amount of smaller branch libraries. The object of this thesis is to describe and try to understand the political conflicts that have erupted during the period 1971-1994. Through a case study containing press clippings from the local newspaper, different reports, political meeting protocols, a historical background of the library and a study of library specific norms and regulations I can create an image of the heated debate. The participants in this debate can be divided into politicians and civil servants and the conflict circles round the fact that from an economical perspective, there is not enough budget to keep all the small, local libraries.

In the project Echoing Nature i have searched a design for an exhibi¬tion concept. That visualizes the natural phenomenon of self-assem¬bling materials in a simplified way. My question is, how can you emo¬tionally re-connect the modern man to nature and raise awareness. I assume my thesis that the experience of a natural phenomenon can inspire us to see a bigger context, provoke curiosity and generate an initial sense of belonging to nature. The result is an interactive sculp¬ture that consists of 3-dimensional Tetris blocks.

The purpose of this essay is to study the coming into being of two newly built public libraries in Sweden, Malmö public library and Linköping public library. In both cases, the architect was appointed through a competition. We have examined the degree of importance that one has put on the buildings functionality and aesthetics, respectively. Furthermore we have studied how the cooperation between library staff and the architects has worked, and finally we have studied to which degree the parties involved think that the interests of the users has been taken into concern. The first main chapter of the report is an overview of the literature found on the subject where we present theories on library architecture used in Sweden as well as abroad.