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 topic of this essay is information seeking for children and young people in municipal libraries. This is based in the growing need for information seeking skills in the Information Society. Policy documents on the topic are scrutinized and related to a concrete praxis. Data has been collected through two case studies; one carried out in Ronneby and one in Trandared, Borås. These cases where chosen because of the existence of a local policy for library skills and information search for 6 to 12-year-olds.

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.

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.

The aim of this study is to investigate leadership in sports organizations and business organizations. The study focused on common and important leadership components and the most important leadership processes in both business context and sports context. The study also investigated common and important leadership components, leadership challenges and which degree leaders used the transformative leadership. The study focuses on leadership components most importantly from the leaders view, including both sport managers and business leaders. The investigation was based on eight interviews, which are analyzed with content analysis.

International reading comprehension studies, like PIRLS and PISA, state that the reading comprehension of Swedish students has decreased significantly since 2000. As a consequence, the National Agency of Education has made reading comprehension teaching a prioritised field in terms of further education for teachers. There has also been a change in Lgr 11, the national curriculum for compulsory school, where it is stated that teaching in reading strategies shall be a part of the central content throughout compulsory school. When the pupils reach upper secondary school level, reading comprehension education is no longer a part of the curriculum. Today, students at upper secondary school for individuals with learning disabilities currently share the same curriculum as the ordinary upper secondary school.

In primary school reading-books in Swedish language is something that students come across early in school and have done ever since the 1800s. After World War II there have been major changes in society. 1962 there was a school reform where the school turned into a nine-year system of compulsory education. That is why it is interesting to see what reading books contain with regard to notions of children, family and class and how the developments have been from the 1950s until the present time. This study aims to analyze and compare the different aspects of how notions of children, family and class are produced in the reading books for primary school for pupils in third grade, between 1950 and 2009.The research questions were:What are the notions of children, family and class in the reading-books?What differences/similarities exist in the reading books from the 1950s to the  recent decades?What could be the reason?I have chosen to apply qualitative text analysis originating in idea analysis.

The aim of this study is to contribute to a better understanding of the syllable as an alternative to the phoneme at the basic reading and writing. This report is based on a qualitative analysis of Håkanstorp school´s approach to the basic reading and writing in class. Their approach to reading and writing is controversial, as it is based on the syllable instead of the phoneme, as usual in the traditional reading and writing. The education result, I have found, is that the syllable leads to a very clear and structured working procedure, which ultimately leads to class teachers being able to work from a diagnostic approach. This structure, with many parts of the course helps educators to clearly follow what level students are at.

The intention of the study is to investigate pedagogues understanding of physical activities in preschool. Should special activities be planned in order to stimulate children´s progress in motor skills? I also want to find out if pedagogues found the acitivities in preschool curriculum which says that the aim is to develop children´s body perception and teaching children how to care for their own health. I have interviewed seven pedagogues and focus of the question lied within motor skills and the joy of movement among preschool children. The result shows that pedagogues regard it to be important to stimulate motor activities and to encourage joy of movement in preschool.

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 purpose of this thesis is to investigate whether the reading promotion project called ?A book?s all sides?, together with the activities of the book-event, can stimulate young people?s reading. The research questions are: How do the project leaders plan and organize activities for the book-event? How do the young people respond to the activities at the book-event? Do the young people get interested in the book which is presented at the book-event? Which connections between Vygotskij?s theory and the activities can be found in the book-event? The theoretical approach is based on Lev Vygotskij?s socio-cultural theory. To answer my research questions I have implemented four qualitative interviews and two interviews with the adult activity leaders and observed a book-event in the classroom.

The main purpose of this study was to investigate in what manner librarians and pedagogues can cooperate in order to help students with reading and writing problems and consequently enhance their information literacy. I aimed to investigate why cooperation between these professions is necessary. Also, I wanted to find out how the general support is on the schools regarding students with reading and writing difficulties, and if the school librarian knows what the special educator can contribute with and vice versa. Lastly, I focused on what knowledge the performers of these professions have about reading and writing difficulties and to what degree their knowledge is based on scientifically proven methods.The two theoretical points of departure are 1) theory of cooperation built upon Louise Limberg?s and Lena Folkesson?s three categories of cooperation 2) and Aidan Chambers?s reading promoting model named the circle of reading.

 The aim of this thesis is to examine men's attitudes towards literature, and how social norms affect their book reading, in order to contribute to the knowledge of why men's book reading is decreasing. This is realized through a discourse analysis of literature recommendations in men's lifestyle magazines.Two magazines, King of Sweden and Magazine Café, are examined through critical discourse analysis. Theories of discourse are combined with theories of gender to explore how gender stereotypes affect men's reading habits.The analysis shows that ideals of masculinity have a great influence on the book recommendations. Social norms, associated with gender, also seem to have significance to whether or not a book is considered suitable for men to read. These are, inter alia, norms of heterosexuality and violence.

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.