The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the functions of the public library for parents of infants and how they see the ideal library. The research questions are: How do parents of infants use the library and what are their experience of it? What opinions and wishes do parents of infants have regarding the library? How can library services be developed to better match the needs of the parents of infants? The theoretical approach is based on Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen?s model of the public library?s functions and the model of classification by Ellen-Merete Duvold and Gunnar Sæbø. To answer my research questions I have carried out three focus-group interviews with parents of infants. The study revealed that the public library functions as a cultural centre, a social centre, a knowledge centre and, to a certain extent, an information centre for the parents.

The aim of the study has been to find out children?s librarians? views on and management of media that contains topics with a controversial nature and also to find out how this affects the public library as a democratic institution. We have conducted the study by interviewing six children?s librarians. By using Vestheim?s terms value rationality and instrumental rationality, we have been categorizing the answers from our informants and thus identified two different points of view.

The purpose of this study is to examine if digital public libraries are serendipitous environments. Serendipity in this instance is defined as finding something unexpected and valuable, while searching for something else.A survey was conducted at two Swedish digital public libraries, where the patrons were asked to fill in a questionnaire online. The questions were based on the work on serendipitous digital environments by Lori McCay-Peet, as well as considerations of human factors that could possibly influence serendipity.The result indicate that a majority of patrons experience serendipity at the digital library, although it?s still more common to do so at the physical library or on other web sites. The result also confirms the importance of taking human factors into account when studying serendipity.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how public libraries in Norrbotten provide multilingual media and how the commitment is legitimized. In January 2014 there was a change to the guidelines for the International Library?s service for providing multilingual media. The responsibility for the provision of this service was also changed. The result shows there has been different ways of implementing the guidelines in practice; this has led to inequalities in the local library service.We have assembled data through qualitative interviews with five different public libraries in the north of Sweden.

AbstractThe purpose of this essay is to analyse and interpret artist Hans Hedberg?s monumental, ceramic reliefs in Sweden and France. Hedberg is internationally famous for his ceramic fruits and eggs in different glaces and formats. A mostly unknown side of his artistic production is that he produced about 50 ceramic reliefs during the 1950s and up to the 1970s in public buildings. Hedberg was one of very few foreign artists in France, who, during a long period of time, produced monumental, public reliefs for the French state.

Local history collections are fairly common among the Swedish public libraries and these collections often contain older or rare material. There are no national policies concerning the preservation of rare books at the public libraries, and the librarians of public libraries may lack that knowledge. The aim of this study is to examine librarians? attitudes toward their libraries? local history collections. We interviewed five librarians in the county of Västra Götaland and also made a small observation study of their local history collections.

Syftet med denna magisteruppsats är att belysa hur bosnienserbiska public servicejournalister upplever den journalistiska yrkesrollen, den redaktionella vardagen och den samhälleliga kontexten som de befinner sig i. Journalister på Radijo Televizija Republike Srpske, RTRS, har stått i centrum för undersökningen som är av kvalitativt slag. Två datainsamlingsmetoder användes ? samtalsintervjuundersökning och frågeundersökning. Båda genomfördes på redaktionen i Banja Luka.

This paper aims to shine a light on the challenges connected to the implementation of a process focused way of thinking in a public service organization. To this we have conducted a series of qualitative interviews, primarily from participants of a university driven project. The project aims to teach decision making employees of public service organizations how to use process modeling techniques to increase their efficiency. We have also interviewed the teachers who have taught the courses included in the project. As a final point of view we have also interviewed a researcher and IT consultants to compare novice users with experienced users of process modeling techniques.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to examine how the public library communicates with young users through the library web sites. Four Swedish public library web pages for children are analysed. In the analysis the web pages are treated as a combination of semiotic resources that, communicating as a whole, hold a meaning potential. In order to identify the underlying meaning of the whole I have applied the tools of Kress' & van Leeuwen's visual social semiotics to the chosen web pages.The information value, the framing and the salience of each composition is examined and analysed, as is the size of frame, the perspective and the vertical angle of a selection of images from each web page. The results of the semiotic analysis are then discussed and related to Jochumsen et al:s four space-model and the notion of ?child perspective? and ?empowerment?.The results show that the child perspective is strongest on the web pages that represent the performative space as dominating and that empowerment is mainly represented as ?doing?, ?participating? and the ?free choice?.

The thesis explores how the category religion is used discursively in Swedish public debates and in what way the discourses can be related to debate-positions. The thesis also exploresquestions of power and how social identities are negotiated: which identities are madepossible ? and encouraged ? by the discourse, and which are being excluded?The specific cases chosen are: (i) the election of Omar Mustafa as a substitute member of the governing board of the Social Democratic party in April 2013, (ii) the appointment of Elisabeth Svantesson as Minister of employment in September 2013, (iii) the debate concerning male circumcision (2011-2013), and, (iv) the debate about Jewish home education(2012-2013).The theoretical and methodological perspectives used in the thesis are discourse analysis and Pierre Bourdieu?s theory of social fields, usually interwoven together. Discourse analysis is mainly used to explore how the category of religion is attached to central binaries in the debates such as faith/politics, private/public, secularism/fundamentalism, etc., and also how chains of equivalences are established. Bourdieu?s theory of social fields is used tocontextualize the discourses in the specific debates and relate them to orthodox and heterodox debate-positions.

This study investigates the use of the social network Facebook among 67 Swedish libraries; 27 academic libraries and 40 public libraries. Data is collected through an analysis of the libraries? Facebook pages and through an email survey. To analyze the data, a series of statistical analyses were performed.The results indicate that the public libraries more actively posted Facebook updates than the academic libraries and that the libraries that had a policy for use of Facebook/social media more actively posted updates than those libraries that did not have such policy. The libraries use Facebook mainly to post links and photos and to announce events, provide book recommendations, and to emphasize special occasions.

In this essay I have tried to come close to a probable answer to the following question: Is there a risk that the trust between the Swedish public and the Swedish medical services staff, including the doctors, will be severely damaged if euthanasia is legalized in Sweden.In order to try to answer that question, and some other relevant questions that has corresponding interest in the context that euthanasia marks, I have done like this: I have investigated experiences from the Netherlands and from Oregon. Since euthanasia is legalized - though partly in different forms - in both these sites. I have then tried to relate the most relevant parts of these experiences to a theoretical frame. This frame had been set up by three concepts: the sanctity of life, autonomy and trust.I have also tried to come close to understanding the impact that demands for autonomy has in this context. And I have tried to understand if the trust that the public has for a country´s medical services staff and the actual doctors is a form of trust that ought to be understood as a form of trust incorporated in social capital.I have come to the conclusion that there is no great risk that the trust between the Swedish public and the Swedish medical services staff, including the doctors, will be severely damaged if euthanasia is legalized in Sweden.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how the indexing of fiction for adults looks like in the public libraries that don?t buy indexed records for fiction from Bibliotekstjänst (BTJ). The questions that I want these libraries to answer is: - Public libraries that index fiction for adults themselves: 1. What tools do they use when indexing?, 2.

The Public vs. private movement has over the past decades identified numerous significant differences between public and private organizations. The observed differences covers almost every field in administrative economics ranging from organizational structure, management accounting, goal-setting and in the past few years even leadership. Strangely, in the majority of these studies little or no regards are given to organizational characteristics or fundamental differences between compared organizations and if these organizations really are comparable when studying the effect of sector.The aim of this study is to compare leadership in relatively similar organizations from both the public and private sector and so clarify if earlier identified differences in leadership styles still surface when leaders working with approximately the same thing in a similar work context are studied.A sample of 348 Swedish principals was drawn from both municipal and private elementary schools. The respondents answered a web-based survey based on the CPE-model resulting in leadership styles mapped according to three orientations: change, production and employee.

The aim of this study is to examine how work at music departments in public libraries has changed with time. To analyze this, the role of music libraries as well as music library users, selection, holdings, acquisition and technological development have been examined. The examined data consists of qualitative interviews with music librarians and library assistants at public libraries in Sweden. To get a time perspective, handbooks and articles about music departments in libraries have also been analyzed.This study emanates from Sanna Talja?s discourse analysis of music libraries in Finland.