The aim of this master?s thesis is to investigate the value and impact that reading groups organized by Swedish Public Libraries, have on its participants, role of the librarian and the Library as whole, according to librarian?s conceptions. In literature and earlier research reading groups are described to represent an important reader pro-motion tool for Public Libraries. At the same time the typical reading group member is often described as a per-son with a familiarity of reading. Another purpose is therefore to investigate the contribution of reading groups in promoting reading, according to librarian?s conceptions.

This thesis aims at investigating the two municipality?s Gislaved and Ljungby. Where the aim is to see if there is any connections, between the type and the degree of public-private partnerships, and the municipalities obtained environment performance. In this essay the starting point is that the environmental performance in the chosen municipalities is good.Interviews among local politicians and representatives for the municipalities plastic industries, has functioned as a way to test the hypothesis. Gislaved and Ljungby have thereafter been compared, in order to see if there is any similarity in the sort and the degree of public-private partnerships, and how that will affect the environmental performance. The overall questions in this essay are:How can the cooperation among the chosen municipalities and the      local business life be described? What kind of Public-private partnership      exists in the selected municipalities?Is there any difference between the municipalities, referring to      the degree of cooperation between the municipalities and the local      business life? Does the degree of cooperation affect the progress on the environmental      performance? The end result shows that the local business life doesn?t have any impact on the environmental performance.

The aim of this master's degree dissertation is to compile examples of different ways of planning, implementing and following up the organisation of two integrated libraries, which serve both the general public and the school. In order to respond to this, we formulated the all-embracing question: How best can the integration of libraries for schools and the general public be planned, implemented and followed up? This formulation gave rise to four further questions. In order to answer these questions, the problem formulated and our basic aim, we have studied the relevant literature on school libraries, libraries for the general public, and integrated libraries. These sources comprise official reports on this theme, dissertations, and more topical articles.

This master?s thesis will try to describe the beginning and development towards a modern public library of the town library in Karlskrona between 1906 and 1959. The specific years refers to the year the library was established and the year it moved to the new library building in the centre of Karlskrona. The aim of the thesis has been to do this historical description and to look at the course from the perspective of the national policies and development for the Swedish modern public library. The thesis is based mainly on reports of the proceedings of the public library and other biographical documents and literature, which has been found in two local archives.

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.

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 aim of this Masters thesis is to examine what part and importance electronic games play in the life of girls, how the girls use electronic games and what the girls think and say about their use of electronic games. We also intend to examine what girls have to say about electronic games at the public library. Our attempt is to illuminate and bring knowledge to those who work within the library with the selection, purchase and conveyance of electronic games. Method used in the survey is focusgroup-interviews with girls in the age between 12-14 years in three different schools. The findings are related to four different perspectives, theory of child development, from a gender perspective, theories of understanding how young people use computer games and theories to understand the purpose of public libraries.

The recent decades have been characterised by a trend where the public sector's been inspired by several methods and strategies from the private sector. The public library is in this case no exception. In this context there are different perspectives on whether or not this will lead to a dramatic change of the role and values of the traditional public library. The aim of this master's thesis is to make a contribution to a deeper understanding of the ideological conflicts within the Swedish public library and its relation to the market. In the literature of library and information science I have identified two separate discourses representing two contradictory systems of meaning concerning this relation.

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 Masters thesis is to examine the user service discourses in the field of public libraries that can be identified in four Swedish library journals. Also which underlying causes that control the discourses and the consequences of them are examined. Questions in this study are: which discourses can be found, what characterises them, what kind of different discourses concerning technology in society control the user service discourses and what are the consequences of them. The theoretical starting-point is Ernesto Laclaus and Chantal Mouffes discourse theory. The method is text analytic.

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.

This study examines the closure of public libraries, and the nonprofit organizations takeover of them as a phenomenon. The aim is to understand why the nonprofit takeover is common and what the takeover symbolizes and if the discourse in media invokes the views on libraries and the profession.Interviews were made with librarians, politicians and representatives of a nonprofit organization to study different sides of the phenomenon. Other empirical data were found in local and national newspapers and media-channels. I discovered that public libraries are highly valued by both politicians and the community. The study also showed that a library in a community makes people feel valued.

This masters thesis investigates how the Swedish county libraries relate to equality between men and women. The thesis treats the county library both as a place of work and as a part of the national library network. One of the reasons why this study focuses on county libraries is because of their special position in the Swedish library organisation as a link between the national policy and the public libraries. The analysis in the study is based on theories that argue masculinity and femininity as social constructions, and therefore can be affected by a different type of conduct. Data was gathered using qualitative questionnaires combined with some quantitative elements that were used to gain fundamental facts regarding the distribution of employees between the sexes and the existence of equality policies.

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.