Background Participation in the community is vital to mental health and is beneficial to individuals and society. Many studies discuss this issue in relation to the disabled, and this study investigates this further. The goal of this survey, performed in Göteborg, Sweden, is to study issues relating to the participation of people with physical disabilities, according to their own perceptions and experiences on this issue. Method Qualitative methodology was used to explore experiences of participation in twenty physically disabled adults by means of semi structured personal interviews. Results From a social constructionist view, disability is explained in terms of being socially constructed.

Mediation of fiction for adult users in Swedish public libraries is a subject which has been little studied from a theoretical perspective. The motivation for this thesis was based on this realization, and the opinion that actual library users too seldom get their voices heard in library and information science-research. The thesis analyzes interviews with seven library users in which they have been asked to talk about the librarys work with mediating fiction. The answers are analyzed using a discourse analytic approach to see how the librarys work with mediating fiction is constructed in the users talk.Two main discourses are identified, one authoritative and one neutral. In the authoritative discourse librarians are talked of as experts who have the knowledge to guide users to the ?right? literature.

This thesis is about how to criticize the large number of non-fiction for children which is published nowadays. I have noticed that both librarians and teachers do not know what perspective to apply with regard to this category of books. There are some good ones, but also a lot of bad ones and some really bad ones. The purpose of this essay is to search by means of criteria from history of art, history of literature ? principally history of children's literature ? and pedagogy, for prevalent attitudes towards non-fiction for children.

Over the past decade there has been considerable debate in the media concerning the necessity of educating parents in how to be better parents, and strengthening their parental role. This question has also been debated at a national level, resulting in the state commissioning a number of official investigations into the problems that parental education could resolve. A growing body of scientific studies have shown that parental-educational programmes play a strong role in preventing behavioural problems amongst children and teenagers. Many Councils in Sweden already offer these parental courses to their citizens, but discussions are ongoing as to whether these courses should be obligatory for all parents before or near to the moment that they begin to have children. This conclusion has been supported by the official investigations commissioned to look into this issue.

The aim of my ?two years master thesis? was to examine school administrators perceptions about important information literacy skills that the students should be able to control, perceptions about what role the teachers and the librarians have in teaching students information literacy and perceptions about the collaboration between these groups. My questions have been: Have the school administrators reflected upon the conception of information literacy? What conceptions do school administrators have about important information literacy skills that the students should be able to control? What role do they consider the teachers and the librarians to have in making all students information literate? How do they consider the collaboration between the teachers and the librarians work? What role do they consider themselves to have on a management level to make all students? information literate? I used a phenomenographical method and carried out six qualitative interviews with school administrators from five senior high schools in the municipality of Gävle. Both public schools and independent schools were included in the study. Most of the school administrators considered information literacy to be the same as criticism of sources, which they also considered as one of the most important information literacy skills.

The purpose of this essay is to examine the construction of the norm-breaking characters Saga from the young adult novel Tusen gånger starkare written by Christina Herrström and Pippi Longstocking from the books written by Astrid Lindgren. In order to do this I have applied queer theory as well as theories of narrative in my analysis.To be able to study the breaking of norms, it has been essential to first examine the way the norm itself is manifested in the books. Because of this I have chosen to begin my analysis with an examination of two other characters who by their normative behavior contrasts against Pippi and Saga, namely Signe and Annika. The understanding of the normative discourse that Signe and Annika represent is crucial in understanding the way Saga and Pippi later turn against it.After that I examine in which ways Saga and Pippi breaks prevalent norms and how they as characters are constructed as being different. Subsequently I study the effects of Saga?s and Pippi?s norm-breaking, taking focus on how it influences Signe and Annika.Finally I discuss the view of Saga and Pippi as subversive characters, and however the books can be said to have a subversive effect.

Entreprenöriell self-efficacy är en viktig faktor inom entreprenörskap som kan antas ha ett samband med stress. Den aktuella studien syftade till att undersöka sambandet mellan prediktorerna rollstress (role ambiguity, role conflict och role overload), generell stressupplevelse, ålder, stöd från omgivningen och kön samt den beroende variabeln entreprenöriell self-efficacy. Även könsskillnader undersöktes. Fyrtiotre nyblivna företagare besvarade enkäterna som skickades ut via e-post. Multipel regressionsanalys visade att ålder, kön, role ambiguity och generell stressupplevelse kunde predicera entreprenöriell self-efficacy.

The aim of this study is to examine which strategies three 18-year-old string students (one violinist and two cellists) use when they practice on their own. The empirical data for the study come from six observations of the students? practicing on certain pieces that were handed out to them. During the observations, the students filmed themselves, and no one else was present in the room during the practicing sessions. The observations were later transcribed and analyzed, which means that its contents were compared and contrasted to results of previous research in the field of practicing.The results of this study show that all three participants first tried to gain an overview of the piece by playing it through from beginning to end.

The purpose of this thesis is to see how the Swedish public libraries present e-books on their website. This study has tried to answer the following questions:1. How do the public libraries construct their definitions of the word e-book, and what patterns are there in the definitions?2. How is the e-book definition presented in the context of the public library websites?This study has formulated its own theoretical framework in regards to how you can categorize definitions in four different categories to help see the way a definition is constructed.

The aim of this study is to point out different aspects of modernity in the cookbook Husmoderns Köksalmanack. It is a publication that has been published annually since 1933. The books have been studied in the light of Anthony Giddens´ theoretical perspective on modernity. The study is based on three different themes that all can be linked to modernity. These themes are; Time and space, Locally, regionally and globally, and Advice.

Computer animated faces have found their way into a wide variety of areas. Starting from entertainment like computer games, through television and films to user interfaces using ?talking heads?. Animated faces are also becoming popular in web applications in form of human-like assistants or newsreaders. This thesis presents a few aspects of dealing with human face animations, namely: editing, playing and transmitting such animations.

The purpose of this study is to examine what readers of fiction literature are influenced by when they choose books. What libraries and bookstores do to influence readers in their choice of literature and how readers perceive the librarys and the bookstores influence on them in their choice of fiction literature. We have also studied which factors outside the library and the bookstore that readers are influenced by when borrowing or buying a certain book and to what extent readers are influenced by the books appearance. To answer our questions we chose a public library and a bookstore, where we interviewed six persons in each place. We have interviewed a librarian and a bookstore manager for information about how these two cultural institutions work with marketing of their fiction literature.

This Masters thesis is a study of the truck-driver profession and their use of libraries located in gas-stations and restaurants along the highways in Sweden. The reason for this interest is the positive trend that has occurred concerning men without any university education and their reading-habits, that is due to their increased interest in listening to audio books. This challenges the general opinion that this group is not particularly interested in reading literature. Questions posed in this study are: How do the truck-drivers relate to the activity of reading literature, what part does the road-libraries play, and how can the services that the road-libraries offer be improved according to the truck-drivers. The method used in the study is interviews made by telephone.

There is no further training in management in teacher education programs, which can create uncertainty among teachers in terms of management. According to the curriculum, the teacher should base it on a democratic approach, but how does it look in real life? The purpose has been to investigate how practicing teachers perceived management and their own leadership style, whether they made conscious choices and if so, whether they then had any purpose in their leadership style. Teachers' views of a good leader and how much influence students have on the teaching, enter into these issues.The survey is based on a qualitative research approach, based on interviews with four active teachers. Although observations were made they did not play any major role in this investigation.

The purpose of this study is to examine the phenomenon ?Living library?, where people are lent out instead of books. First it is looked into what the Living library means to the person who is borrowing a living book and what it means to the living book itself. Than the Living library is put in a public library context. This is done through a case study of the city library of Helsingborg and the city library of Malmö.