AbstractC-level essay in political science, by Frida Orlinder, spring semester 2008Supervisor: Susan Marton?Good contracting? ? A study of contracting in public procurement regarding the transportation of school children?Over the last decades models influenced by the market have been gaining influence in public administration all over the world. New Public Management has been presented as a theoretical ?shopping basket? from which concepts can be applied to the administration of municipal services. The purpose of this essay is to investigate in an explorative way how New Public Management (NPM) views contracting and the role of the internal customer in contracting.

The aim of this Bachelor´s thesis is to investigate how library statistics, performance measurement and indicators represent the modern public library activity. During the last decades the public library has gone through a lot of changes. Information overall has increased and new technology has been introduced into the library. This new development has had effects on the library users. The statistics reported to the Statens kulturråd (National Arts Council) has not changed in the same way.

This thesis explores the changing prerequisites for accountability in terms of Swedish arms export. The study aims to uncover what has happened with the conditions for accountability in Sweden since the responsibility for export control was transferred from the government to the public administration. By investigating how the term ?accountability? has been used in the literature of democratic theory, an abstract ideal model is being created.  Comparing the changed structural arrangements, with each other and the ideal model, it is concluded that the prerequisites for accountability now seems to be in a worse state than they were before..

The purpose of this Master`s thesis is to examine if the pur-chase of media in public libraries reflects the library's role in society. Two questions have been posed: ? What view of public library's role in society is reflected in the purchase of media? ? What principles guide the selection of media in public li-braries in Sweden? In order to investigate these questions, we used a question-naire that we sent out to a sample of 120 public libraries in Sweden. The analysis is based on a theory of three ap-proaches to the role of the library developed by Douglas Raber. The three approaches are the conservative approach, the populist approach and the social approach.

The purpose of zoos has changed over the decades. From being menageries where wealthy people showed their collections of exotic animals to today?s zoos where science, conservation and education has become a central part of their work. Education in zoos gives them the opportunity to spread the knowledge about ecology, biology and biodiversity to the general public. Their aim is to change the public?s attitudes towards our wildlife and raise awareness about the threats that exists against our planets biodiversity.

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 purpose of this thesis is to explore what possibilities Swedish public library has to work with and promote integration. The possibilities are examined on the basis of internal requirements of integration, the role of public library in the civil society and its policy documents. Further, the thesis examines what Swedish National library politics could contribute to this particular field. The experience of integration politics shows that a genuine commitment from all parts of the society is required in order to build an integrated society. The part of a society that public libraries are closest to and have the greatest impact on is undoubtedly the civil society.

We are daily using the public space to move throughout the city. The public space is an important part of our city and it?s where a lot of social activities occur and a lot of different events take place. The outdoor environment in the city should offer the residents nice and varying places for staying. In this essay I will try to understand how the physical environment works and how people moves and behave in the public space.

The aim of this study is to look at censorship and attempted censorship of books about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transsexual (GLBT) people in public libraries in the USA. People from the public can submit formal challenges to a book at the library when they find the material offensive which can lead to those books being taken away from the library shelves. The questions asked are why GLBT- literature is being challenged, and sometimes banned, and how do the libraries deal with the challenges to the books.It is nowadays the people from the public, rather than the government or the librarians that are behind many cases of removal of books with homosexual themes. The study presents some of the fictional GLBT- literature that has been cause for much controversy in the USA. All the five examples mentioned are children?s books concerning GLBT- themes and are among the most challenged books in American libraries in the past twenty years.

This thesis investigates how energy is used in three public baths today and suggests measures that could reduce the energy demand. The results show that there is a great poteltial for energy savings i public baths, and that it would be interesting to examine some of the proposed measures further..

The aim of this issue is to study how Swedish public libraries deal with the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of information in connection with public use of the Internet. The authors intention has been to find out whether the public use of the Internet has caused ethical problems for library workers and how the libraries solve situations when they consider their principles violated by library users. The authors study the debate on the issue in a couple of Swedish library magazines published during the late 1990s and they also give a few examples from the USA during the same period. They study the ethical principles and directives for schools published by the Swedish Board of Education as they claim that many of the public library users are students who bring along their ethical conceptions and thereby affect the ethical climate of the libraries. In their study the authors refer to ethical rules given to librarians by their trade union DIK and to the conclusions drawn from the hearing Good Ethics on the Net held by the Swedish IT Commission in 1998.

This report is written in cooperation with Eskilstuna municipality public administration for urban planning. The reports purpose is to look into how other public authorities carry out public purchase of consultants and entrepreneurs in the urban planning area. The goal is to come up with suggestions of how Eskilstuna municipality public administration for urban planning can improve its purchasing process in this field in order to minimize the risk where a consultant or entrepreneur files an appeal against the decision of awarding a contract to another rival. The appeal can be filed to the county administrative court.The public administration for urban planning can do its purchases through the model of "lowest price" or "economically most favorable" for them. When using "economically most favorable", the department can value a number of soft parameters by giving them points and the offer which gets most points can be rewarded the right to sign a contract.

The purpose of this study is to examine how the editorial staff from the Swedish radio program Morgonpasset i P3 and the Norwegian radio program P3morgen uses Facebook and Twitter and how they can use social media as a tool in the production. The purpose is also to examine how active both of the editorial staff are on Facebook and Twitter and which kind of language they use on Facebook and Twitter. The radio programs both work under a lot of similar conditions and are both controlled by public service in both countries. To conduct the study qualitative interviews was performed with the web editor Christoffer Malm from Morgonpasset i P3 and the radio presenter Silje Nordnes from P3morgen in combination with a quantitative content analysis. The study was conducted over a limited period of the autumn of 2013.

The purpose of this Master thesis is to examine whether the term elasticity is relevant and functional to apply to public library organisations. Another aim of the thesis is to relate the term elasticity to public library organisations in a network society. Sociologist Manuel Castells provide the theoretical framework on the network society. Three investigations (meant to complement each other) in two Swedish public libraries seek to give answers to these questions.To be able to examine which areas of public library activity are elastic, I make a rough definition of what public library organisations consist of ? nine activity fields are identified using IFLA?s guidelines in combination with Swedish law of public libraries.

This essay explores how artwork in the public space can be analysed, conceptualized and described by bringing attention to site. Through an analysis of artworks in the yearly art exhibition of Fittja Open 2011, the essay draws attention to site-specific art and structures of power. The principal aim is to present not only the exhibition of Fittja Open 2011 but also other artwork in the public sphere in Fittja, a suburb to Stockholm. From this point of departure other interests evolve that concerns the "image" of Fittja. The analysis, based on research in art history, architecture, ethnology and philosophy as well as qualitative interviews, also focuses on understanding the role of site and the relations between art practice, institutions and site.The result shows that there are problems with a ruptured interface between the artwork and site.