This thesis is a contribution to the discussion on the public library?s institutional identity in late modernity. The aim is to shed light on the public library?s identity as expressed through its public events. The thesis seeks to answer the following questions: What kind of public events are offered at public libraries? What themes distinguish the content of these events? What characterizes the institutional identity expressed through these events? In addition to the concept of institutional identity, a model of four library spaces, developed by Skot-Hansen, Hvenegaard Rasmussen, and Jochumsen, constitutes the theoretical framework of this thesis.

This research shows and analyses how pupils in ninth grade in the nine-year compulsory school look at being multilingual, at the Swedish language and at Swedish as a second language. I also want to know if language and culture knowledge are taken care of in school as it says in official documents for the Swedish school and as it also is desired in an intercultural education. For my research I do eight interviews in a suburb school south of Stockholm.My work includes a limited account for the current research about being multilingual, Swedish as a second language and about the close relationship between language and culture. The applied theory is a social constructivist theory which in short can be explained like that we construct social structures that have consequences on the individual as well as on the society.I show in my research how the view of the world around the pupils influences their view on their languages, their school and their neighbourhood. I also draw conclusions from my interviews that language knowledge is little appreciated in school and that Swedish as a second language has a low status..

Sweden is today often defined as a multicultural society. The implications on organizing and providing information in public libraries are many, since the systems presently used in the western hemisphere are not adapted to multi-cultural information. This thesis aims to outline ethical and practical problems that arise when organising and providing information concerning cultures other than western, and not least, when dealing with material in other scripts. With this theoretical framework the thesis examines the website of the International Library in Stockholm, a website built to serve users of different languages and scripts than Swedish. The research questions in this thesis are: 1, what specific problems can be distinguished within library work in a multicultural and multilingual environment? 2, what problems and needs were considered in the creation and design of the International Library?s website? And 3, can examples of problems and possible solutions of these be seen in the information and it?s organisation on the International Library?s website? The empiric material consists of the International Library?s website, and interviews with three informants involved in developing it.

The aim of this study is to explain and analyse political steering of public libraries in Swedish municipalities and the roles of politicians and administrators in this process. To fulfil this purpose five municipalities have been studied. It is argued that both politicians and administration have to be included in a study of steering and that the relation between politicians and administrators should be seen as an interplay. Planning and evaluation are discerned as the two main activities in the steering process. The material in this study consists mainly of information collected through interviews with library responsible politicians and library managers in all five municipalities.The results show that libraries are considered politically uncontroversial and that politicians see little need for political interference and steering.

Bullying can have serious consequences on everyone involved. Consequently it is important that school counselors are able to intervene. Thereby they need an unambiguous definition and knowledge about bullying that has been produced from research so they do not make mistakes that could lead to further damaging of the students. Thus the aim of this study was to examine how school counselors define bullying compared to the views held by scientists and students in secondary school. Through a review of previously done research the definitions of scientists and schoolchildren was summarized.

SUMMARYThe riding school horse is the base for the riding school. Riding schools are looking for a suitable horse that meets their demands for exterior, age, education, temperament, price and sustainability. Many different aspects may define the sustainability of the riding school horse; of them is how long life the riding school horse has in riding school activity. Previous studies have shown that the riding schools requirements are 8-12 years life span in the riding school.The purpose of this study was to describe the Swedish riding school horse life span in riding schools and at what age the riding school horses were recruited, disposed and the reasons for disposal. Information about the riding school horse life span in riding schools and reasons for disposal can provide important understanding regarding the importance of health for the riding school horse, riding school economy and profitability in the riding school.

The aim of this master thesis is to measure library service quality in two groups of libraries, newly developed and well established, and to see if there are any differences in the users perception of the dimensions in LibQUAL+. The thesis also examines the different perception of quality for the user groups: undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty. Another approach is to test the Swedish translation of LibQUAL+. Different theories on service quality are presented but the main theories are from the marketing perspective. The grounding and development of LibQUAL+ is described as well as the use of the instrument in different libraries.

A substantial part of the Swedish outdoor education is being practiced in so called ?school forests?. The concept school forest was first introduced in the 1980?s by the organization Skogen i Skolan. The definition of a school forest is an area that is being used for educational purposes, over which the school and the land owner has reached an agreement of how the school may utilize it.

This thesis aims to identify bottlenecks in the internal communication of aSwedish public library. Specifically, it addresses the behaviour of the library staff when they seekfor work-oriented information through interaction with their colleagues. A fundamental assumptionof this study is that the information-seeking process depends on organisational culture. I have madean exploratory case study in a medium-sized Swedish public library, where relevant issues areidentified and correlated with the culture of the organisation.I have used Schein's three-level model to describe the culture of the library; this model definesculture as a set of basic assumptions and the actions of people as expressions of their culture. Datafor the study were gathered using several approaches, including interviews with the library staff andobservations of them.

The aim of this Master's thesis is to examine the contemporary educational tasks of the Swedish public library as they manifest in Swedish library journals. Our main question at issue is: Which educational discourses are there? And in relation to our main question: how do the concepts of information literacy, lifelong learning and adult education relate to each other? Is there an antagonism between the public library's duty to supply fiction as opposed to non-fiction? and: What are the consequences of these discourses in the service provided by the library?Our theoretical starting-point is the discourse theory as proposed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. We analyse 39 texts from four Swedish library journals: Ikoner, bis, DIK-forum and Biblioteksbladet. The analysis is done in two phases.

The aim of my master?s thesis has been to examine the situation of the price lists in the National Library of Sweden, in Uppsala University Library and in the Nordiska Museet Library. The starting point was that the institutes have been operating within different institutional practices. These operational differences between the institutes have affected the collecting, the organizing and the accessibility to the information of the price lists. My master?s thesis is based on Birger Hjørlands theories of domains and knowledge organization.

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.

The aim of this thesis is to examine librarians' view on the knowledge and competence required at a small public library and how they look upon their education in retrospect. Library education in the 1970's and 1980's was mainly practical, a vocational training, but since 1995 the education results in an academic degree in Library & Information Science. Due to this, we focus on the ongoing generation shift in Swedish libraries as an aspect of knowledge and education. The empirical study is based on interviews with librarians working in minor public libraries. The informants form two groups, based on their education; ?old? ones and ?new? ones.

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 this Master thesis is to describe why and how public librariesuse the social networks Facebook and Twitter. The focus is to study whatbrought about their use, how the work is carried out, ideas and objectivesbehind the use and what libraries actually convey on the networks. Themethodology is twofold: semi-structured interviews with responsiblepersonnel at four Swedish public libraries, and an ethnographic contentanalysis of four months of the libraries' status updates and tweets onFacebook and Twitter. The theoretical framework consists of a model forthe roles of the public library in society, and of discourses about thepublic library in media.Results indicate that social networks are used to market, make accessibleand inform of the library's resources and services. Furthermore, networksare used to communicate/interact with followers and to inspire people toread.