As public libraries in Sweden receive the bulk of their budget from local government funding, which has stayed static or, at best, seen small increases, libraries have been faced with inadequate resources with which to satisfy increasing expectations from users. As few libraries are over-funded in the first place, ways may have to be found to combat this situation. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine alternative sources of funding for Swedish public libraries, and my main focus of interest is that of sponsorship. The method used is a literature study combined with an empirical study, in which interviews were conducted with five persons each with long experience of working with public libraries. The literary study deals with the concept of sponsorship, and the motivations for companies to sponsor are also examined.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the identity, competences and professional development of corporate librarians. I have done an empirical study based on semi structured interviews with 11 information professionals who were working at Astra Zeneca at the time of the re-organizations of the company in 2009 which ultimately led to the closing of the libraries. I have also examined the views on competences and professional development of librarians in general, both in Sweden and in Denmark. I have used Thomas Brante?s theories on profession types as well as Anders Ørom?s theories on librarian identities as my theoretical framework.

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 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..

This study explores the selection processes regarding fictional literature in English as asecond language education. The aim is to illustrate the relationship between the knowledgeteachers seek to pass on to their students and how the governing documents and the Westernliterary canon affect which literature that is chosen. The study uses qualitative interviews withsix teachers from different gymnasial schools in Northern Sweden. The results show thatteachers use literature as a tool for teaching grammar, lexicon, language structure and storytellingskills. In the more advanced English courses, the teachers prefer to exert more controlover which literature is read, mainly due to the fact that the governing documents specificallyrequire a presence of older, culturally established works.

The aim of this Masters thesis is to identify discourses within the school library field and to analyse which professional identities the discourses result in for school librarians. The empirical data consist of 71 articles from Swedish journals concerning school libraries and school librarians, between the years 2000-2003. The theory and method used is a discourse analysis which is inspired by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. This form of discourse analysis was chosen since it was useful when identity was the focus of study. The analysis is accomplished in three steps.

The aim of the study was to describe how managers at the eldercare system especially in nursing homes work to ensure high quality care. For this purpose, a qualitative method was used in this study and four managers at nursing home have been interviewed. Previous studies have shown that managers in some cases are restricted in their actions and that this may slow down the improvement of the care. At the same time the managers describe their work as demanding and diverse. They have a significant staff responsibility, meaning that they have to ensure the quality of care.

The aim of this qualitative study is to examine how users of talking books perceive the possibility of downloading talking books from home without visiting the library and how this affects them. Three research questions were formulated:How do talking book users reflect on their library usage?Have the subject's' library usage changed since introduction to the download service?How have users experienced the service?To answer these questions, five semi structured interviews were conducted with five different users of talking books in Sweden. All subjects were currently using download services which they had gained access to from their local public libraries. In analyzing the interviews, a theory established by Henrik Jochumsen and Casper Hvenegaard Rasmussen in Gør biblioteket en forskel (2000) was used.

This paper conducts a qualitative examination based on interviews with six childrens librarians. The purpose is to put a perspective on the librarians competence and focal knowledge within the area of reading promotion and reading stimulation aimed for children, and also to examine how this competence and knowledge is constructed. The work is based on the following questions: How do childrens librarians experience reading promotion and reading stimulation within their profession? Which competence and what knowledge do childrens librarians experience as most important in order to make their work with reading promotion and reading stimulation function? What can be concluded regarding the construction of their competence and knowledge? The analysis is carried out from theories about competence, tacit knowledge and reading promotion. Following primary conclusions are drawn from the study: The professional role is mainly experienced as promoting reading as pleasure, but also as an important factor for childrens language development.

The purpose of this study is to gain additional knowledge and a greater understanding of pupils experiences of joining a special teaching group.  The study focuses on pupils with special needs and the ambition has been to get a student perspective of how they perceive their education with special support. In addition, the study is concerned with how pupils perceive their special support and whether this has any relevance to their learning, development and future goals.This study is based on Urie Bronfenbrenners theory The ecology of human development. The theoretical perspective highlights the interaction between the pupils and the school environment, which is important for development and learning. The study is based on a qualitative research method in the form of interviews.

 This report is an evaluation of Peab's purchase and call-off system, PIA.PIA is used to order goods for Peab's construction sites. The background to the work is that users of the system have understood the system cumbersome to use when purchasing goods for construction sites. The evaluation was carried out by the interviews and tests with users of the program, in this case, supervisors and site managers at the company. Ten users of the system were interviewed and eleven people have carried out a test order.The focus is primarily on the test order that users have implemented, which has been clocked and analyzed for time and cost. The evaluation is also a user analysis concerning how the users perceive the program, mainly in terms of usability, functionality and benefits.The result of this report shows that PIA is economically profitable to use for the purchase of goods for construction sites.

Background: Health care is a strange place for the patient. To make this enviroment as good as possible, would the patient be well informed. The patient has right to know if it is a bad mews and often he/she needs caring after the information. Nurse´s basic responsibility is caring, for her/him it´s important to prevent the shock for the patient that can appear. Aim: Describe the nursing staff responses to the patient, using the patient´s perspective in relation to bad news. Method: A litterture review has been made with nine articles. Current research materials that meet the study´s purpose has been applied in databases and analyzed.

This master thesis is based on the sociocultural perspective. A qualitative research study was conducted to investigate children's attitudes towards reading, texts and libraries.The theoretical background is constituted by ideas from the new sociology of childhood, literacy-studies and reader-response theory.The study was conducted with 23 children, 13 girls and 10 boys, participating in focus groups.The results of the study reveal that children's literacy-activities in school are strongly influenced and limited by adults. Children's interest in pictures and non-fiction-reading do not correspond to the school institution that favors traditional media and fiction. The study also reveals a gender division between children's literacy-activities that tends to grow with age. All the children in the study regard libraries as book-houses and wished for libraries that combine activity and serenity.The thesis shows the importance of being aware of, and engage in, children's reading-interests and reading-practices if the reading stimulating activities in schools and libraries are to be successful.

Pupils learn in different ways, varied teaching is needed to encourage all pupils. Aesthetic can be a good tool in this work and dance is one of the aesthetic subjects that can be used in the education. Dance gives the pupils an awareness of their bodies and what they can express through it. The essay discusses diffrent angel of incidence of dance in school and its positive effects and examines what kinds of dance there are in the schools of Vänersborg?s municipal.

Many organizational changes have been accomplished in elder care since the 1980's and many of those have been influenced by market mechanisms. The purpose of this study is to examine how the implementation of these market mechanisms has affected three important aspects in the work situation for personnel. These aspects are, demand, control and support. To attain the purpose of this study, five qualitative interviews with home care personnel have been carried out. The interview material has been analyzed and structured with the help of Karasek and Theorells demand-control-support model.