The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine similarities and differences in qualitative experiences between formal and informal Reading Groups from the participants? point of view. The empirical data was acquired from interviews with nine reading group participants, of whom four of them participated in formal Reading Groups and five in informal Reading Groups. To analyze the empirical data, Louise M. Rosenblatt?s theory concerning reading and a method concerning Reading Groups by Immi Lundin were used.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine virtual Reading Groups, and which meaning the users perceive that the virtual Reading Groups offer. In addition, the study inquires which details can be improved to further amend the needs and wants among the users of virtual Reading Groups. Through these outlines, it is discussed how libraries and librarians can make use of virtual Reading Groups as a resource. The study is based upon qualitative interviews, consisting of asynchronous e-mail interviews with a total of sixteen members in two different virtual Reading Groups.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine Reading Groups inpublic libraries from a bibliotherapeutic perspective. Inorder to reach this purpose following questions needed to beanswered: What does the discussion in Reading Groups looklike? What does the Reading Groups fulfill for theirparticipants? What is the circle leaders? role? The study isbased on the observations of three Reading Groups and offive interviews of its participants. With the help of CarolineShrodes theory the study shows that there are few signs ofbibliotherapy in the Reading Groups. But on the other handthey show similarities with other bibliotherapeutic readinggroups, by being a social venue for its participants.

The purpose of this work has been to understand the reading group from the perspective of the society. The studyhas taken place in the city of Västerås and the results can thus not be used in a more generalized sence. Byfocusstudies conducted with members from four different Reading Groups connected in different ways to the libraryin Västerås I have reached the following conclusions.According to Jürgen Habermas theories the Reading Groups, with their ideals regarding education and meetingswhere everybody are equals, belong in the part of the public sphere that he calls literary. There are someconnections to the political sphere, for exempel the down to earth quality of the literature that is the choice ofthe groups and their way of discussing it.One problem that occures when one tries to apply Habermas idéas regarding the public sphere on readinggroups is that the criteria Habermas considers as vital to sphere for it to work properly does not seem to workon the Reading Groups. Inclusion, eqality and freedom of subjects are necessary to create a public sphere.

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.

The purpose of this Master Thesis was to study the reader in the informal reading group. To fulfil our purpose we have used the following questions: how did the reader become a reader and what does her reading look like, why do people choose to participate in a reading group, how may the group influence the individual member in her reading and interpretation of a book, does the reading group have a therapeutic function, how does the informant find the group dynamics and different roles in the reading group, and finally how does the informant experience the discussion in the reading group. We have used two studies about Reading Groups, one by Elizabeth Long and one by Jenny Hartley. Our theory is divided into reading and group psychology. We have interviewed seven women belonging to different Reading Groups.

The simple view of reading is a theory in which reading is divided into decoding and linguistic comprehension. The theory has been used to explain and to subgroup reading disabilities. Research has also investigated if additional factors are of relevance to reading. In the present study, decoding was divided into the factors orthographic decoding and phonological decoding, while comprehension was divided into word comprehension and grammatical comprehension. The purpose was to analyze these factors and their contribution to reading ability in children in fourth grade: one group with reading difficulties (n=36) and one group with typical reading ability (n=36).

The main aim of this thesis is to study how and in which way the library personnel works with Reading Groups and their view of Reading Groups. I also want to study which role the governing- and policy documents have in the library personnel?s work. The following questions were asked.Which similarities and differences between the different library personals outlooks and acting can be interpreted from the following aspects:? Promoting reading, book selections and the leader's role?? To talk about personal subjects and to create possibilities for personal growth and increased empathy?? To promote language development and reading comprehension?The methods used in the study are a combination of interviews and observations.

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an intervention that focuses on phonics, decoding, reading speed and phonological awareness for 8-9 year old children in reading difficulties. Participants were selected on the basis of screening test results in grade one (decoding and reading comprehension). The participants were divided into two groups, an intervention group (A1, n=10 children) and a control group (A2, n=10). A1 received 30 minutes of intense reading instruction every day for six weeks from special educational needs teachers on top of their usual classroom based reading instruction. The control group received only their usual classroom-based reading instruction.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the meaning the reading group of the public library has to a number of users. To fulfill the aim the following three questions have been formulated: 1) What do a number of users expect from the reading group of the public library? 2) Which approach/attitude or approaches/attitudes do a number of users have to reading and to talking about reading? 3) How do a number of users experience the ongoing reading group?The research is founded on qualitative interviews with five users that take part in three different Reading Groups in public libraries. The theories that are used is the theory of three so called strategies - the pragmatic, the traditionalistic, the emancipatory ? and the theory of flow.

The purpose of this master?s thesis is to examine how librarians perceive the importance of staff Reading Groups in helping to make fiction more accessible to adult users of public libraries. The study also examines how librarians perceive the learning processes in such groups, and what these learning processes involve and how they appear. The empirical data was acquired via observations of four staff Reading Groups and interviews with seven public librarians who took part in the groups. In part, the empirical data is interpreted by means of Lena Wilhelmsson?s analytical tool, which deals with changes of perspective within an organised group.

This master thesis examines online Reading Groups with swedish participants. The aim is, by way of introduction, to investigate what kind of online Reading Groups that exist and how they work. The overall question of the thesis is: how do a conversation about books on the Internet look like? The theory used is Grounded Theory and this is a methodology which has influenced the hole structure of the study. Grounded Theory apply that issues and hypothesis must be created from the collected material, and the author collected for this reason material in the form of survey answers, email-conversations, blogmaterial and articles to draw up exact issues based on this material.The material was sorted into four different categories; social reading, reading fellowship, virtual freedom and anonymity and the issues were formulated according to this categories.

This thesis deals with the leisure-time reading of fourteen men with two different occupations, teachers of technology and directors of companies. The main reasons for writing the thesis are that very little is written about mens reading habits and also statistics that tell that mens reading decline regardless of educational level. The purpose has been to compare the reading and relations to literature between the two groups of men and to find out if any differences have to do with factors such as social background or age. The questions we have asked our collected data has been what, how and why the men read. We have tried not to investigate the work-related reading although we are aware of the difficulty in separating this from the leisure-time reading.

Books and reading are important elements in cultural policy. On 1 January 2002 VAT on books and magazines was reduced from 25 per cent to 6 per cent. The purpose was to increase reading in all sections of the population. A special Book Price Commission was appointed to follow and examine price trends and to work for an enhancement of reading in all groups of the Swedish population. But what form of reading are the BPC talking about? With a theoretical point of departure in the theory of power and discourse by Michel Foucault the aim of this thesis is to explore if there is an existing discourse about reading and, if so, how this discourse is operating in the BPC reports.

The aim of this study is to look at how librarians express theirpart in Reading Groups organized by public libraries. Thestudy is based on interviews with seven public librarians insouth regions of Sweden. The main theory used to analyse isfound in the article Bibliotekaren som litteraturformidler(1994) written by the Norwegian librarian Jofrid KarnerSmidt, where she talks about five different roles that alibrarian can have in this context and how they appear. Threeof these roles were used in this study: the pedagogue, theliterature expert and the marketer.The interviewed librarians mostly had a similar view on howthey look at their role in the reading group. They saw theirpurpose as to provide all kinds of people with a possibility tojoin in discussions about mutual interests and share variousopinions about books.