The purpose of this study is to examine and explain why three Swedish public libraries failedin their ambition to act as information services for small and medium-sized firms (SMF). To support this purpose two major assumptions are made:1) Public libraries who plan to run this kind of "business" must act with the same means as "professional" services.2) The service must be adjusted to the information needs of the customer.Based on these assumptions sixteen factors which are crucial to the "success" for this kind of service are presented.Applied to the information services of Lidkoping, Sölvesborg and Västervik, these factors reveal a number of shortcomings and mistakes made by the libraries.To understand this result these information services are seen as parts of a traditional Swedish public "library-thought". It is shown that, fundamental ideas in the way the public libraries are defined, like the responsibility to act in a neutral and democratic way, also characterised the three information services.These ideas together with the opinion of SMF as a "rational" information-consumer resulted in information services who did not meet the information-needs and information-behaviour of SMF..

In the digital era, new services have entered the public libraries, like seeking information on the Internet, in databases, newspapers online etc. But many citizens do not know that these services exist. The libraries have a democratic responsibility to inform about them. In the county of Östergötland a project started in 2001 where libraries in five small municipalities built websites in which they present all their electronic services available. One of the aims was with the help of different kinds of marketing to reach special groups of people, like adult students, small companies and politicians.

This study deals with the Swedish public library in our changeable time. New technology, an altered media situation with a growing digitalization, globalization and a society focusing on the individual and the market have put the public library in a new, indistinct position. It is described as facing an identity crisis. The aim of this thesis is to, by interviewing a group of young people ages 15-16, find out what the public library is for this user group and what it ought to be according to them. How do they value the services provided by the public library? Are there services they miss? The thesis also aims at relating the opinions of the young people to earlier research.

The purpose of this master thesis is to use marketing theory on the library?s activities. The marketing theory used is the 4Ps; product, price, promotion and place, as it's presented by Philip Kotler. Because the library can be seen as a service oriented organization Christian Gronroos theory of marketing in the service industry also has been used. A case study of the public library in Broby was made to illustrate how the public libraries? activities can appear in the light of marketing theory.

Today, "the digital library" is the common way of describing a managed collection of information, with associated services, stored in digital formats and accessible over a network. Digital libraries have mainly been developed at research libraries, but during the last few years public libraries have started to offer similar services.The aim of this Master's thesis is to study how the Swedish public libraries plan to develop their digital libraries according to their mission statements, and in what way they have implemented them at their web sites. 21 public libraries, the largest in each Swedish county, were investigated.The library mission statements are investigated to find out in what terms the digital libraries are described and to what extent. The library websites are examined with respect to what kind of digital services are offered, to what extent they supplement or replace the physical library, and if there are new digital services not found in the physical library.In most mission statements the digital library is referred to in sweeping terms like "IT activities" and "new media". However, a few of the libraries clearly regard the digital library as an important part of the future operations, speaking of it in well defined and extensive terms.The public library websites are relatively homogeneous when it comes to services supplementing physical library activities, like web access to the library catalogue and links to other library catalogues.

The purpose of this essay was to inquire how workplace conflicts are managed at a number of public social services offices in south-western Skåne. This essay's main research questions were: What organizational factors determine how conflicts arise and are managed in a work environment? To what extent are such factors prevalent at the above-mentioned social services offices? Are certain conflicts typically prevalent in the public social services? If so, what are they? How does the workplace in question manage the conflicts that arise? The inquiry was conducted among the staff of three public social services offices, applying the vignette method. According to previous research, certain system conflicts are typically prevalent in public sector organizations, which adversely affect the work conditions of social workers at the organization's professional level. Two examples each of this conflict type and of interpersonal conflict were included in the inquiry.

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.

The aim of the paper is to examine how public libraries can develop their services for children with ethnic minority backgrounds as a user group. This is achieved through studying the conditions for library services provided for children aged 9-12 in this group by public libraries in suburbs densely populated with ethnic minorities. The paper uses both a literature review and empirical research on the community libraries in Rinkeby and Rosengård as well as the town library in Lund. Services potentially available to these groups are analysed and discussed in the later chapters. The overall conclusion is that those services provided for ethnic minority children are largely the same as those provided for in children library services in general.

A too large public sector impedes the economic development of Sweden and more privatization could increase the efficiency, quality and diversity of the services offered. It is therefore important that firms operating in traditionally public sectors are given the opportunity to grow. We have through a case study examined two mid-size firms that offer services to, and compete with, the public sector. This thesis aims to describe the growth strategies these firms are using and if competing with the public sector implies any differences in possibilities or barriers when it comes to the firms? growth.

This study finds that the Swedish Government has a process for purchasing financial advisory services that is more transaction-oriented than the corresponding process at a Swedish private equity firm. The conclusion is supported by previous research comparing public and private sector purchasing processes. However, the differences between the two purchasing processes are not as significant as one might believe given the fact that the Government, unlike the private equity firm, has to operate under the Public Procurement Act (LOU). The tendency of the Swedish Government to apply a more relationoriented purchasing approach than expected is most likely driven by the fact that this represents the established professional norm for purchasing of professional services in the private sector. As LOU and the professional norm impose contradictory influences on the Swedish Government?s purchasing of financial advisory services, the final outcome depends on which of the two forces that dominate..

The purpose of this paper is to investigate in which aspects the public library is affected by its local community. This is re-searched by means of an exemplified case study of a Swedish public library in which we analyze governing documents and the library website with respect to environmental scanning and mar-keting of library services.The research questions are: How are the local community?s demands on the public li-brary being described in the governing document? How is the public library?s response to the demands of the local community being described in the operational plan? How are the demands of the local community, as shown in the governing document and the operational plan, re-flected in the marketing of library services on the library website?Our conclusions are that:The demands of the local community are described in a general fashion in the governing document, but there is a lack of concrete political guidelines.The public library's response to the demands of the local commu-nity is described to some length in the operational plan, but not with respect to economical factors.The demands of the local community are reflected to some length in the marketing of library services on the library website. Many of the overall themes that we identify in the governing document and the operational plan can be found in the marketing directed towards important target groups..

The aim of this master thesis is to examine the attitudes among library staff regarding a music downloading service called Musikwebb, which is available in many Swedish public libraries. It focuses on the impact of Musikwebb on the process of music selection, the relationship between Musikwebb and the digital development in public libraries and what service Musikwebb offers its users. The gathering of material was executed through focus group interviews with library staff in four libraries. This empirical material we divided in three categories: Music selection, The Library and its digital services, and Library services. We use the results of Sanna Talja?s discourse analysis regarding the relationship between Music, Culture and the Library to analyze our material.

As the way of communicating and accessing information has changed radically over thepast decade so has the way the public libraries operate to reach the citizens. In thesetimes the demands of what a public library should be and offer the visitors havechanged. One should have the option to access the digital public library at any givenhour of the day, from anywhere in the world and at least have the same possibilities ofinformation as the visitors at the non-digital, "real" library.In this Master's thesis we will analyze and discuss the condition of the Swedish digitalpublic library of today, 2006, and the forward thinking work with the issues ofdevelopment in this matter. In order to do this we set out to examine the attitudetowards the public digital library among the staff at a small number of Swedish publiclibraries and their supporting institution, the county library. Moreover, the attitudesdefined have been compared to the actual status of the services and medias at the publiclibrary websites.In conclusion, we have detected a certain standardization of what the digital publiclibrary consists of today.

The purpose of this bachelor thesis is to examine the methods public libraries can use in order to market youth services. It is also a chance to evaluate an untested marketing model adapted to public libraries. Young people are one of the most difficult groups to attract to the library and thus librarians need adequate methods to deal with this problem. We have interviewed librarians, carried out observations and examined documents in accordance to the triangulation method. Before one can begin marketing the libraries one ought to know of how marketing is done and the principles behind it, therefore we have given a simple explanation of marketing and marketing theory.

In this thesis the marketing strategies of two public libraries have been explored and studied.The public library of Kalmar participates in the project GÖK which partly is a marketing project. The public library of Kalmar thereby differs from the public library of Trollhättan which is not involved in the project.The main aim of this thesis was to focus on their marketing strategies and see if there were any differences. The thesis was also concerned with the customers and their experiences of the quality of the services offered by the public libraries of Kalmar and Trollhättan, including the customers' perceptions of the operative marketing, and finally if there was a connection between marketing and customer-centered quality. Qualitative methods as well as quantitative methods were used for the collection of information .The preliminary assumption that Kalmar had a more explicit marketing strategy has been confirmed in the study. However, the customers at the public library of Trollhättan were more satisfied with the total quality of the services offered.