The aim of this Master's thesis is to understand public library users' perceptions of librarians' attitudes to users and professional knowledge. The purpose was also to investigate the relative importance to the user of pleasant or a knowledgeable librarian. As a theoretical framework we use theory from business economy where the experience of the user is in focus. Answers were sought to the following questions: How do users perceive librarians attitudes to users? How do users perceive librarians professional knowledge? How do users want to be treated by public librarians? What kind of knowledge should public librarians have, according to users? We interviewed twelve students in university education that are users of public libraries.

The main purpose of this Master thesis is to illuminate the understanding of local politicians regarding the public libraries and the librarians. We argue that the local politicians´ opinions regarding public libraries and librarians influence the way they act and react in their roles as politicians.In order to achieve the aim of this thesis we focused on following questions:What are the opinions of the politicians:- regarding themselves in relation to the public library?- concerning public libraries in general and its functions especially in the municipalities of their own?- concerning the librarians and their work in a public function?What are the conclusions to be drawn regarding the politicians´ interest and commitment to public libraries in the politic daily-life of the municipalities? Our empiric material consists of qualitative interviews with six politicians elected in two municipalities in the interior of Västerbotten, a northern sparsely populated district. In order to distinguish the various opinions that emerge from the material, we apply a phenomenographic approach. The analysis result we present in three conceivable categories in order to express the different opinions.In general our study points at a positive and favourable attitude to the public library, and all the respondents assume that the municipality ought to offer this service.

The purpose of this master's thesis is to describe the expansion of Sundbyberg public library during the decade 1954 to 1964. Our focus of interest is the library?s concentration on public relations in 1954.During the experimental year 1954 a public relations librarian, Bianca Bianchini, was employed. Her task was to introduce thelibrary to the citizens of Sundyberg who were not already using it. As a background to this concentration on public relations we also describe the early development of the public library in Sundbyberg.

The purpose with this essay is to understand how the tenants association, management ? and administrator in the public housing sector in an average city. What are the affects going to be when they take away the ?stopplag? and will the segregation change? And also to understand how the public housing sector works with handle segregation and to prevent it..

The question of direct citizen participation in politics and administration is a contestable one. Its proponents claim that it has positive consequences even for the more "traditional", representative democracy, since participation leads to an increased political knowledge and increased political interest, and thus creates a revitalised democracy. Critical voices have however been raised to the validity of this claim. Critics have also pointed out direct participation as problematic, because it leads to problems of political inequality: a difference of political influence between ? on the one hand, the citizens participating directly and those that restrict their political participation to voting, and ? on the one the other hand ? between the institutions, for example schools, that employ, and don?t employ this method of direct citizen influence.In this essay, these two points of criticisms are tested in the context of user-boards in elementary and secondary schools.

Det finns fördelar med att använda projektfinansiering vid PPP. Undersökningen visar att projektfinansiering är ett enastående verktyg för riskallokering. Dessutom resulterar projektfinansiering i minskade kostnader för agentkonflikter. Emellertid är privat finansiering normalt sett dyrare än offentlig finansiering..

The thesis is a case study that deals with public space based on how people use them. Public spaces are an important part of our city life and everyday life. Quality public spaces and places are due to its design and use, which are the primary aspects of this study. Hässleholm has been the location for the case study inventory items. Five different methods have been the basis for the study, and through them it has been possible to study what makes a room usable and unusable and what criteria is necessary for people to want to stay in the public rooms.

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.

Less diversity and more homogenization in the media`s news range is the subject for our bachelor thesis. By analyzing and comparing three separate weeks in two of Sweden's largest evening newspapers Aftonbladet and Expressen we wanted to discoverhow the diversity between the two newspapers had changed over the years, more precisely from 1993 until now. Had there been a homogenization or not? We wanted to study this because it is a long going debate about the news stories becoming more and more the same. An important debate because less diversity in news events and news presentation may lead to less diversity in public opinions and knowledge.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine the function of public libraries on the social web, focusing on reading promotion and reading stimulation. For an understanding of the larger context regarding public libraries on the social web, we conducted online interviews via email with people in the Swedish library profession, together with a content analysis of various texts on the subject found in library journals and on the Internet. Furthermore to identify the public library's practice on reading promotion and reading stimulation on the social web, we did interviews with librarians at a public library on their use of a blog for this purpose, together with a questionnaire handed out to the library's users on their use and conceptions of the blog.The conceptual framework of this study consists of four key aspects in the theoretical and empirical definition of Library 2.0 presented by Holmberg, Huvila and Widén-Wulff. The results showed that the public library can create a substantial value through its use of the social web, but it?s necessary to have a clear vision of the desired outcome.

The purpose of our essay is to investigate and compare the general and operational risk management in the private and public sector. As an introduction to the subject we describe the differences and similarities between the two sectors. Our survey is based on the term risk, the definitions of risk management, its development and finally the process of risk management. Since our survey is focusing on operational risks we also describe the operational process and the specific operational risks.The method we used to investigate the subject is a quantitative method. A survey was sent to 100 companies in Sweden, of which 50 were private companies and 50 were public companies.

Bolivia is a multiethnic country where the indigenous people constitute the majority of the population. Despite two decades of attempts to take the democracy further is its foundation more volatile than ever. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to examine if exclusion is taken place in Bolivia from year 1982 until today and if so in which way political exclusion constitute problems of democracy in Bolivia. The answer depends on the understanding of democracy used in the analysis. In this thesis I use theories of process-, participation- and deliberative democracy.

This master?s thesis aims at examining and structuring different viewpoints concerning the assignments of the Swedish public library system. The method used is ideology analysis.The main questions are: what are the overriding goals connected to each of the different assignments? How are these goals motivated? By which means are the goals to be reached? And how does our analysis relate to earlier research on the assignments of the Swedish public library? The thesis can be said to consist of three main parts. Part one is a theoretical framework introducing the concept ?ideology analysis? and the concept ?schools of thought?.

The main issue of this master is to investigate what influence the phenomenon of postmodernity has on the Swedish public library. Is it possible to talk about the Swedish public library as postmodern, and if so, is it expressed by a postmodern discourse? The concept of postmodernity is defined as an open and inclusive value system where all kind of opinions and preferences take place. According to a postmodern point of view there is no such thing as an objective or general truth. A postmodern ideology does not talk about reality but about realities.

The aim of this study has been to investigate the significance of the newly started project Vimmerbymodellen for unaccompanied young refugees. This regarding to how the unaccompanied young refugees are participating in creating networks and meeting points in the local community. Vimmerbymodellen is described as an integration project where the nonprofit sector collaborates with the municipality. The empirical material has been collected through semi-structured qualitative interviews where five unaccompanied young refugees and four involved adults have been interviewed. The empirical material from these interviews has thereafter been analyzed through the concept of social capital, identity and empowerment.The main result of this study shows that participation in the project is expected to contribute to the creation of networks and meeting points which has significance for unaccompanied young refugees.