The aim of this master?s study is to examine the function of the public library in the local community at present. I have searched for the answers to the following questions: Which position has the public library in the local cultural policy? What characterizes each library and which are the priorities? What is the local profile of the public library? What cooperation partners does the public library have and what do they mean to the library? Does the public library intensify the local community in any way? To answer this, I have made three qualitative case studies. Interviews and collection of documents were carried out in three different communities.

Public participation in urban planning is meant to increase democracy in the planning process. Even though all citizens have the option to participate in urban planning debates, few seize their chance to partake. This thesis describes a study on how user needs are met and prioritized in design processes concerning urban planning. The aim was to determine whether user-centered design (UCD) methods could be used as an avenue for public participation in urban planning and ultimately invite more citizens into the planning process.The thesis details a design process where a team worked to develop Farsta, a suburb of Stockholm. The design problem was the question of how Farsta could become an attractive business location.

This essay examines the historical development of group rights for cultural minorities in Sweden between the years 1970 and 2010. The purpose of the study is to analyze the development of political measures taken at government level for different minority groups, foremost explaining the division that have arisen between measures aimed at the five national minorities, the Sámi, the Swedish Finns, the Roma, the Jews and the Tornedalians, and measures directed at other ethnic groups.My conclusions are that the division in Swedish public policy between one the one hand national minorities, and on the other hand immigrant groups, is in no way self-evident. The division has arisen from an international standard on how democratic states, such as Sweden, should treat their cultural minorities. Further, this division has had an immense impact in shaping public policy as well as determining the type of group rights introduced for minority groups in Sweden.A difference has also been found in how the minorities are perceived by state actors. Immigrant groups are currently perceived as less entitled to group rights due to their short presence in Sweden, whereas national minorities are seen as more entitled to group rights due to their long historic presence in the country.

This paper aims to analyze how preservation of and access to old and rare book collections are organized in public libraries in Serbia. The paper is based on an analysis of documents, a survey and qualitative interviews with librarians in Belgrade and Novi Sad. Serbia is a country that has experienced violent historical periods with far-reaching consequences for its old and rare book collections. The interpretative background refers to documents about cultural policy in Europe and in Serbia. Serbia is a country in transition which aims to join the European Union.

This thesis takes as its point of departure the Swedish governmental family policy and the debate on the proposed reform ?vårdnadsbidraget?. The supporters of the reform present it as something that will increase the freedom of choice for families and benefit the children, whereas the opponents warn for decreased equality and a return to the male breadwinner-model.From a constructivist perspective, language is closely related to power through defining and ascribing meaning to reality. By applying a feminist political theory on the debate within the Swedish national parliament 2007/2008 and conducting a discourse analysis, the aim of this paper is to analyse which concepts are used and how they construct to what makes a family within the political debate ? is there any difference or similarity between the view of the opponents and the supporters of ?vårdnadsbidraget??The main conclusion of this paper is that even though the political ideal and rhetorical concepts differ between the supporters and the opponents, they still constitute the heterosexual nuclear family as an obvious norm in family politics.

Previous research has, by studying large listed firms, identified cost reductions and knowledge transference as the primary reasons for outsourcing.  Previous research has also indicated that Business Process Outsourcing is likely to increase in popularity and experience high annual growth going forward. This study aims to explore why mid-sized and large firms decide to in Jämtlands län, fully or partly, outsource their finance/accounting activities. Theories regarding transaction cost economics and resource based view composes the foundation of this study and the information used has been gathered through the use of semi-structured interviews.  The results shows, like the chosen theories and previous research indicates, that the outsourcing decision is primary based on expected cost reductions.

The Swedish National Labour Market Administration wishes to acquire further knowledge about how the evaluation process of vocational rehabilitation at the employment service operates as a part of the quality assurance of this activity. The primary task for vocational rehabilitation at the employment service is to investigate the work capacity of unemployed people, to give them increased knowledge and better understanding of their own capacity concerning work or education. The aim of this study was to survey the evaluation process of vocational rehabilitation at the employment service in Sweden. Data were collected through telephone interviews with 15 occupational therapists employed at the employment service, who were working with vocational rehabilitation. The result shows that the investigation of work capacity can take place in different environments and that the space of time for an investigation can vary.

The underlying purpose of this study is to investigate how the libraries in Sweden organize and administrate the service of providing literature in other languages than Swedish. The study focuses on the central guiding principles that regulate the provision of multilingual literature and how these guidelines are implemented in to practice at the libraries. As the guidelines are closely connected to the official discourse in Sweden concerning policies targeted towards immigrants, the guidelines will be examined from a perspective of integration politics. To assemble data a survey has been conducted looking into factors such as how the libraries perceive the guidelines, how the libraries do business intelligence and user inquires to reach out to the users of the multilingual media, forms for statistics and method of working. The results points out that the libraries in their work with multilingual media are confronted with three tensions; the first tension is that between the libraries aim to promote equality and freedom for the individual and at the same time to fulfil certain collective interests and goals.

Phosphate is a used as a surface treatment method which is used for various purposes in the industry. In this case, phosphate coated wire is used in the processes to achieve a desirable outcome. The reason to why phosphate coated wire is used in the production process is because phosphate acts as an accumulator, where it stabilizes the lubricant on the surface of the wire. Lubrication is important because it plays a major role in the roll quality and characterizes important benefits regarding the outcome.Currently, SKF has to wash away all phosphates residues after extrusion process in an operation called tumbling. The main reason for this is simply because the surface has to be completely free from lubricants and coatings till the next step of process.

With this essay we want to describe the transformation process that the real estate owner has to go through to sell the current rented flats to tenant. We also want to provide an understanding how the valuation is performed in the transformation process and highlight the issues that affects the price in the valuations. In the essay we would like to see if the valuation and the transformation process differ in a public real estate company compared to a private real estate company. Based on this we have asked us the following question to answer: -Is there any differences in how real estate?s are valued in the transformation process between public real estate companies and private real estate companies? We have used a qualitative approach to keep our main question.

The aim of the thesis is to investigate to what extent the pedagogy process has been affected by the close collaboration between librarians and teachers when it comes to education on the information search process. The thesis shows that the librarian is seen as an acting intermediate for information, and is regarded as a part of the learning process. The issues covered comprise of how students, teachers and librarians perceive that the students becomes information literate, how they perceive that the subject fields are covered, and how information has been transmitted, and how all this has been affected by the fact that the librarian is actually less available in person. Also, the following questions are discussed; how do librarians, teachers and students interact through the homepages of the course and "the landscape of studying"? And in what respect have the old library halls changed into that, which is available 24 hours a day, with different kinds of meeting opportunities where the search of information has been integrated with group projects? The foundation of this study is built on an evaluation of a project comprising of virtual study environment at the University of Linköping.

This masters thesis investigates the relation between China and the Information Society as it is manifested in the UN conference the World Summit on the Information Society WSIS. The first phase of this two-phase conference took place in Geneva 10-12 December 2003, with two documents, Declaration of principles DP and Plan of action PA, as main results. The information policy is central to an authoritarian rule in its efforts to keep control over the national identity. The thesis investigates the impact that the information revolution and Internet might have on the Chinese national identity through the acceptance of DP and PA in various aspects. With the use of the information science theories by Manuel Castells and Frank Webster, the vision of WSIS was compared with the Chinese information policy.

The purpose of this thesis is to shed light on how evidence-based librarian and information practice (EBLIP) is understood and practised at some Swedish hospital libraries, and also to analyze how EBLIP functions as a strategy to bridge the gap between research and practice as described by Haddow & Klobas. The theoretical framework for the study is partly based on Haddow & Klobas description of the gap between research and practice in the field of LIS and partly a description of the EBP-process which plays a key role in the use of EBLIP. Interviews have been done with four people, three librarians, all with management experience, and an academic development officer, active at three different hospital libraries where EBLIP is practiced. All informants believed that it is important to make use of research results in order to improve services and practice. In their efforts to apply the research findings the informants face a number of hindrances, which indicates a gap between research and practice.

Bachelor thesis in Business administration, School of Business and Economics at Linnaeus University, Controller, 2FE13E, spring semester 2014Title: Capital budgeting in Municipal-real estate companies - A study of the law of public housing company impact on capital budgeting.Authors: Axel Erlandsson, Caroline Hellman and Niklas LundqvistTutor: Anders JerrelingBackground: Municipal owned real estate companies  has in the past been obliged to take responsibility for providing housing to Swedish municipal inhabitants. Municipal owned real estate company?s has in the past been prohibited to act in profit purpose. In January 2011 the previous law of public housing was replaced with the new law on public municipal housing companies. The municipality may not provide the municipal owned company with any financial advantages against a private owned real estate company.

This Master's thesis aims to investigate the reference interview using the discourse analytical method discourse psychology. The reference interview has been studied thoroughly, and its importance has been proven repeatedly within the field of Library and Information Science (LIS). However, it has never been studied from a discourse analytical point of view before.The material for our study was gathered at Malmö public library, and consists of 10 tape-recorded and then transcribed reference interviews. Our study shows that there are several discourses within the reference situation. The dominating discourse, the reference interview discourse, is found within all the reference interviews.