Reading spaceFurniture for reading for the new city library of GöteborgThe main purpose of my project has been to inspire people to read books at the library. I wanted to create something very site specific and chose a room on the second floor of the new city library to work with. To be able to relax, feel inspired and to concentrate on reading, the visitors of the library need to experience a sense of security. My solution to the different conditions or problems in the room and the needs I identified is a seat hanging inside a frame. When sitting down in the seat, the frame is low enough to see over but it is still experienced as a private spatiality.

Author: Elisabeth Wahlberg Title: ??I?ll just get mum to help me?About Young Adults? Strategies for Coping with Reading and Writing Difficulties in Daily Life  This study investigated how seven young adults, who during senior high school underwent a syllable based intervention due to reading and writing difficulties, developed their literacy skills, and what strategies they used to try to overcome reading and writing problems, whether at work, during studies or in their leisure time. The period from when the participants had left school ranged between three and eight years. Qualitative as well as quantitative data was compiled for the study. Qualitative data consisted of  semistructured interviews and quantitative data of tests performed before the intervention and on two occasions after, in order to compare results over time.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to investigate the factors of children?s voluntarily reading in their spare time. We also want to know if the children choose non-fiction books for their voluntarily reading. The method as well as the empirical basis of this study is qualitative, with interviews of twenty-eight children in ages between 9 and 12 years. We conducted nine interviews with 3?4 children in each group.

The aim of this Master?s thesis was to investigate if one can identify a pattern in a family?s reading habits. Our empirical data was gathered in a survey distributed to a family in three generations, between the ages 15 to 82. The family was interviewed in a life time perspective, in a so called life story character. The questions addressed in this thesis concerned how the reading habits and the general attitude toward literature differ between generations in one family.

The purpose of this study is to examine how women?s reading of the Harry Potter books can be understood on the basis of gender theory and reader-response criticism. The empirical data is gathered through qualitative interviews with six female Harry Potter readers between the age of 21 and 35, and is analyzed through several theories regarding gender and reading. The results show that the readers are critical towards many aspects of the books, especially when it comes to the stereotyped depiction of women and men. The books are said to reproduce the gender dichotomy, the gender hierarchy and the heteronormativity in society.

The aim of the study was to examine how the public libraries participate in the integration of immigrants in the Malmö-/Lund region. Librarians and immigrants were interviewed about the services offered by the libraries in the area of multiculturalism and what kind of service that is requested by the immigrants. The interviews also included possibilities to contribute to increased knowledge among the native Swedish people about different cultures represented among immigrants in Sweden. From the qualitative analyses it is concluded that the libraries represented in the study contribute to the integration of immigrants. The respondents gave multiple examples of the libraries? usefulness in the integration process by offering immigrants possibilities to develop their knowledge in the Swedish language, and also to find information about the Swedish society and culture.

The aim of this study is to describe how pupils in fourth grade talk about their attitude of reading fictional narratives in school and on their spare time, their motives to read and how the school promotes fictional experiences. The study is based on interviews with 18 pupils from the same class, divided in four groups. The interviews were analyzed from a literature reception theory. The result shows that some pupils are very engaged in reading fictional narratives, while others more or less, are forced in to reading, because their teacher wants them to. All the interviewed pupils would like to read exciting, interesting books, but they feel that they don?t get the right support neither from their teacher, parents nor their friends. They describes that they don?t discuss the meaning of reading or things that the reader can read between the lines.

Swedish university libraries traditionally collect recreational readingmaterial only to support the teaching and research interests of theirinstitutions. However many university libraries hold a substantial yetunspecified collection of popular fiction. This thesis investigates theextent of these collections and examines academic librarians' viewsabout students' recreational reading in the academic context and theirattitudes towards the role of fiction and of readers' advisory inacademic libraries. The theoretical framework includes literature andresearch about the benefits of reading for pleasure, collections' rolesand readers' advisory strategies. The empirical material was gatheredthrough quantitative surveys sent to academic librarians in Sweden.The results show that academic librarians are positive about thebenefits of recreational reading for university students.

The aim of this study is to examine the roles of the children?s librarian in a reading aloud context. To reach understanding in this subject, we have conducted interviews with four Swedish librarians working in public libraries whom are involved with reading aloud practices. Previous research shows that the reasons for reading aloud in libraries are diverse and plentiful. Such reasons can be to spread cultural experiences, help children develop their language skills and promote the library to the public.

The aim of the essay was to describe what some young Swedish and Spanish people had to say about alcohol cultures. Some of the questions asked were: How are the alcohol cultures in Sweden and Spain described? What are the differences, and where do they come from? What would an ideal alcohol culture look like? The investigation also had a comparing angle, as I was interested in what the people valued in their own culture and in the others´. The result was that there hardly exist a perfect alcohol culture, but that the stricter Sweden as well as the liberal Spain both have positive and negative aspects. Differences in politics and culture seem to create variations in a society´s drinking customs.

The aim of the study was to examine the reading ability of adultswith intellectual and/or communicative disabilities. The group adults withintellectual and/or communicative disabilities consisted of 66 individuals.One control group consisting of 36 children aged 7 to 12 years and onereference group consisting of 14 adults were used. Participants were given anumber of language and reading related tests. Adults with intellectual and/orcommunicative disabilities had significantly lower results than the adultreference group regarding all tests and significantly lower results than thechild control group regarding phonological processing. There was nodifference between adults with intellectual and/or communicative disabilitiesand the child comparison group regarding word decoding and readingcomprehension.

In this essay, I will look at three different Compulsory comprehensive schools in one community and I will compare final grades from students who graduated in spring 2006. I will also examine how the three schools work with students, and in what way they approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties, so that they could reach goals set by The Swedish National Agency for Education. The aim with this essay is to show differences between schools in the same community and my question is if it is the way you approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties that affects the student?s grades and results.The study is concentrating on three schools in one community and students with dyslexia and reading- and writing difficulties that went to those schools. I have spoken to remedial teacher at each school about how they approach students with dyslexia/reading- and writing difficulties, what kind of methods the use, how they investigate if a student is in need of special help and how they grade their students who are in need of special teaching because of their learning disabilities.

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.

The purpose of this thesis is to form an idea about the qualitative value and meaning of reading fiction in a psychological perspective and over a lifetime. Seven women, 68-79 years old, were interviewed about their reading habits of fiction in their lifetime. The material is presented as life stories. I use an inter-nordic research project called the SKRIN project which looks upon reading habits from an individualistic and psychological perspective. I also refer to an American study which focus on reading development with roles readers take in different ages of life written by J A Appleyard.

Title: Culture?s Affect on the Determinants of Customer Satisfaction in Retailing: The Case of a European Retailer in the U.S. and China Date of the Seminar: 29th of May 2007 Course: BUS 809 Master thesis in International Marketing Authors: Lisa Bustamante Chesley Norman Charlotte Valind Advisors: Johan Anselmsson Cecilia Cassinger Keywords: International Retailing, Determinants of Customer Satisfaction, Culture, United States, China Thesis purpose: Our study aims to identify the determinants of customer satisfaction of two national cultures in a global retail setting, in order to clarify what role culture has, if any, in customers? satisfaction with an international retailer. Further, this will uncover if a Western perspective of determinants of satisfaction is a universal means of capturing what satisfies customers across cultures in a retail setting.