The care for the elderly in the municipalities has recently seen the need for a formalized system for quality assurance. Under increasing demands for monetary efficiency while bound by law to retain acceptable standards in health care, there is need for efficient and at the same time quality-assured management. The municipalities often solve this puzzle by introducing systems and standards influenced by theory-clusters such as NPM (New Public Management), TQM (Total Quality Management) or other quality management theories.This essay focuses on how the public administration in the municipalities defines quality and designs and implements system for formalized quality assurance. Our basic view of organizations is institutionalist and our theoretical framework includes theories about quality, NPM and TQM..

The aim of this study is to examine how and in what way users of the public participate and affect the archival information that is to be preserved for the future through the examination of three archival projects involving public participation. The study seeks to examine if participation of the public could lead to increased democracy and diversity of information in the archives. The study will be performed through the examination of three participatory archives all tied to traditional archival institutions.The study is based on the theoretical framework of Benn and Gaus and their notions of public and private which they discuss using the key words access, agency and interest. The study also takes into consideration Laura Millar?s theories of social memory as a means for the public good.

Syfte: Uppsatsens syfte är att blottlägga de antaganden som ligger bakompublic service-begreppet och de konkreta villkoren för SVT. Syftet ärinte att utvärdera huruvida SVT sköter sitt public service-uppdragutan varför det överhuvudtaget finns ett public service-uppdrag ochvilka värden det grundas på.Problem: Vissa värden som finns i public service-begreppet och därmed ocksåhos SVT, som vilken roll medier ska ha i en demokrati och om de kanförmedla sanningsenlig journalistik, problematiseras som regel inte.Varför anses SVT vara en institution som är trovärdigare än andra?Går det överhuvudtaget att erbjuda en ?public service? via televisionsom regeringen menar sig kunna göra?Tillvägagångssätt: Denna uppsats tillämpar inte den traditionella uppdelningeninnehållandes teori, metod, analys och resultat utan diskussioner ochresonemang, teori och analys förenas kontinuerligt. Uppsatsen är iförsta hand teoretisk och utgår ifrån tillgänglig litteratur och SVT:sstyrdokument. Med detta som grund förs en kritisk diskussion kringpublic service-uppdraget och dess innebörd.Resultat: Public service existens eller icke-existens baseras i mångt och mycketpå vilken typ av samhälle vi vill ha.

Thick skin in Texas - an investigation on storytelling and pictorial language. I took my starting point in a story about the cowboy Jaquin, who goes to the Tivoli, where he gets caught up in a dramatic adventure. I extracted three scenes from this story, and I experimented with whether it was possible to make the separate scenes tell their own story, in three separate drawings. Without depending on the frame story or on any kind of text. In this project I partly wanted to explore the possibilities of the drawing.

The subject this thesis will investigate concerns the matter of how political ideologies exist within public libraries with a focus on the democratic ideal. Public libraries are part of the political system and we want to show how political ideologies take their shape in public libraries and the possible consequences of this. With the help of three major political ideologies, liberalism, conservatism and socialism we investigate how the democratic ideals of these ideologies are expressed in documents that describes activities the libraries will and have performed. In order to identify these ideologies we use discourses in cultural policy as a bridge between the investigated documents and the political ideologies. As an analytical tool we have developed a model that describes the relation between text, discourse and ideology which we use in our analysis.

This case study has its starting point in an unpublished study where the results showed that there is a conflict between the leadership and the employees in a private company. The conflict is identified as a result of the company leadership is steering for cost savings and efficiency The aim of this study is through analysis of  the open questions in a quantitative survey describe how the staffs  attitudes and culture is affecting the leadership of the organization. The ideological aspect is very clear and through the aspect of the structural differences between the public and private sector makes it possible to identify the staff?s social rules, ideology and group norms.  These are shown to be in conflict with the economical perspective of the private sector.

The purpose of this Masters thesis is to examine how gender patterns are described in the modern picture book. Focus is on the description of men and women and their emotions and living conditions. Do the descriptions follow stereotypes in the form of binary opposites strong/weak, active/passive etc. in which one component of the pair, often associated with masculinity, is privileged or are there examples of breach of normative gender? The analysis is based upon forty of 149 picture books that are presented in a children's book catalogue published by The Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs Statens kulturråd, in the year of 2000.

The main purpose of this master thesis is to investigate in what ways library and public preschool cooperate with families with immigrants background in developing and protecting children's languages and cultures in two districts, Hässleholmen and Norrby, in the community of Borås. I want to investigate the parent's meaning of view according to which roles the libraries and public preschools involvement play. The study is based on qualitative interviews. Nine interviews were undertaken with parents who live in these two districts and five interviews with the librarians and preschool teachers who work in the libraries or the public preschools. The study of relevant literature, which describes topics such as psychological aspects of immigration, facts about children with immigrant's background and their language development and multicultural librarianship, provides a basis for the discussion.

The aim of this masters thesis is to examine how the educational work of the Swedish public library was regarded in the Swedish library journal Biblioteksbladet at three different periods of the twentieth century, i.e. the thirties, the sixties and the nineties. Using a theoretical framework from the field of professionalization and a methodological framework of hermeneutics, it is shown that the educational work of the thirties can be described as having a focus on free learning whereas the educational work of the sixties can be described as having a focus on public utility. The educational work of the nineties focuses on the information seeking process of the user. It is noted that this development during the century can be understood as a shift of the cognitive authority of the public librarians.

The aim of this project was to design a furniture that raises thoughts and curiosity about how to relate to people you share furniture with. Luova, a changing piece of furniture for public spaces is a bench where the user can choose the degree of social interaction. Furniture for public spaces has a diverse audience ranging from children to adults. Some come alone, others in group. Some are sitting down for a short time while others stay for longer.

The aim of this study is to look at the identity of the public library, and to examine one way to make the identity of a specific library strong. PUNKTmedis is a newly opened library in Stockholm, aimed solely at people between 13-19. The question to be answered was: How can it affect the image of the public librarys identity when you aim the activity towards a specific user group? To answer this question, the qualitative method of case-study was used. Five interviews were carried out, with representatives from three different groups: users, politicians and librarians.

Facebook is today a phenomenon that has connected the whole world. With millions of users this has become an attractive place for soccer clubs to connect with their fans. But in what ways are they using Facebook as a tool to connect with their fans?This essay aims to answer the question if it?s a difference in the way English and Swedish teams communicate with their fans on Facebook. The study was conducted with the use of telephone- and mail interviews.

Participation as Pedagogy ? Imagined Race and the Exhibit of Swedish Peoples-Types.This essay will analyse and give a deeper picture of the ?The Exhibit of Swedish People-Types? by focusing on the pedagogical ideals that formed the exhibit as an participatory media. The exhibit was led by the famous race-biologist Herman Lundborg and toured Sweden in 1919 displaying the racial constitution of the Swedish population using material gathered by the public itself. The exhibit has been described as an important tool in popularising eugenics in Swedish society during the early 20th century with the ambition of gaining funds to create the first race-biological institute and to influence policy-making. Nevertheless there has not been a single study which has focused solely on the exhibit and how the pedagogical ideals that permeated it affected the relation between the public and the media itself nor the political implications of this relation.

Participation, public art and participatory public art as phenomenons and subjects have been studied and discussed. With interviews and observations as a base, we have studied projects and discussed participation, effect and quality in relation to these. Furthermore we have looked at how the participatory art processes work in Sweden and England. This essay seeks to discuss the process of participatory public art and to emphasize the elements contributing to the quality of this process. It is up to us as planners to recognize the possibilities for a qualitative place. To mediate between different interests, for example between politicians and stakeholders, between economics and quality, between the place and its users, between individuals and the community, and in our case between artists, users and the municipality. Public art has gone from being about the product, an art piece, to becoming more of a process, from non interactive to interactive. Participation ranges from receiving information to play an active part in the process. Four cases have been studied, taken both from Sweden and England, showing the diversity of processes connected to Participatory Public Art. From interviews conducted in Sweden and England information and thoughts have been received and they show a higher degree of use of participatory public art in England, and also a higher consciousness.

A general topic underlying this master thesis is how the public library is being transformed through the subversion and re-articualtion of meaning according to different discourses. The aim of the study can be divided in to levels of analysis. At the first level, the aim is to investigate how categories such as users, needs and vision are articulated in a specific case ?the visionary project Garaget in Malmö, a project which in part include a public library inspired by Idea Store. The next level of analysis sets out to explore how the case of Garaget is related to a totalizing discursive struggle over meaning within the element the public library.