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.

This thesis examines the verification of the terms and conditions stated in contracts based on the Public Procurement Act. In March 2013 the Swedish state procurement commission released " Good Business - A Strategy for Sustainable Public Procurement " (SOU 2013:12), which found that the proportion of control and verification is relatively low. The thesis examine how verification is carried out and looks for an explanation to why verification is not more oftenly performed. To answer these questions two care studies, based on seven semi-structured interviews, is presented as the empirical material. Network theory has been used to analyse the empirical results, and aspects of commonly used theories such as contract management and "Markets and Hierarchies" by Williamson has also been taken into account.

Background: During the 2000s, there has been an increased interest in studying business management and strategy implementation with customer focus in public organisations. To achieve business goals it is important to continuously work with strategies to meet customerdemands for increased efficiency and service. Purpose: The aim of the essay is to examine how to work on strategy implementation in a municipal real estate company from a management perspective in order to achieve overall goals. Method: The study?s methodology is a case study based on qualitative telephone interviews that were conducted with representatives in managerial positions from various levels of the company. The choice of the qualitative data was considered relevant in relation to the chosen topic of the thesis. The empirical data was then compared to the theoretical framework of the thesis. Results: Strategies guide the company to achieve the overall goals, which are later on broken down into operational targets.

This master?s thesis attends to a debate in the Swedish daily press concerning the public library which arose after the Swedish Moderate Party?s publication of their cultural political document Kulturen 2.0. This document contains a number of standpoints, of which three directly concern the public library: charges on book loans, libraries on contract and politically balanced purchase policy. In all, 28 articles are examined by means of an idea and ideological analysis. The purpose is to find out what is behind the conflicts surrounding attitudes about the public library's mission and activity in an era of needs for change.

Title: Internal Communication Approach ? A study of the internal communication-channels of the ICA Administration. Background: The ICA Administration is in the process of generating an organizational change with the purpose of improving their external communication. The internal communication, on the other hand, has been put aside and is missing guidelines at the present.  Since the ICA Administration does not know how the staff uses the internal communication-channels they cannot optimize nor develop them. As the literature shows, it is important to choose the channel that is most appropriate for the type of information that it is meant to communicate. Choosing the wrong channel, or using it wrongly, can bring problems consisting of the staff experiencing to receive less information than needed in their daily work. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to explore and describe the internal communication between the employees of the ICA Administration from the existing communication-channels and their usage. Method: Through the initial interviews with the staff, the internal communication-channels of the ICA Administration were determined.

In 2014, the Swedish leisure-time centres after school became widely criticized on several occasions by school authorities. The cause for its criticism was a reflection of leisure time-centres with lots of untrained staff and a lack of pedagogical aspirations. The conclusion of the criticism was that these leisure-time centres do not fulfil their potential. However, these assessments has only to a limited extent become a part of the public educational discourse in Sweden. This discourse has mainly focused on the decreasing results in the Swedish school, which has caught the attention in the media and ended up on the political agenda.

There is a need for correct and adequate pain assessment in horses. Methadone is used in pain management in horses but the full pharmacokinetic picture of methadone is not yet known. The aim of this pilot study was to develop a behaviour protocol and suggest a reliable recording method for use in a larger research project with an aim to potentially correlate behaviours to concentration of methadone in blood. In this study two coldblooded trotters were given methadone intravenously with doses of 0.1 mg/kg for horse 1 and 0.2 mg/kg for horse 2. The horses were videotaped pre and post methadone administration.

Our study is focused on how the public sector can collaborate with the private sector on a certain issue. The public sector wanted to create a project to increase bicycling in the municipality of Kalmar. Our problem was to develop a sustainable way to collaborate between the two parties. We managed to present a suggestion on how the public sector with communication could improve their Public Relations with the private sector and therefore letting the parties benefit from their differences, thus making it possible to release synergy.Using semi-structured interviews and a workshop, we could clarify the values and attitudes of the parties to bring forth the core values to develop a shared vision. Where the identified differences were found, we used a dialog strategy based on intercultural conflict management as a communication tool.

Objective: In this thesis, we assume that the organizations' interests are governing their behavior/positions. It seems possible to draw conclusions about organizations'interests on the basis of the behavior / positions that will appear in the givenopinions on Swedish Public Investigations. The purpose of this thesis is toidentify self-interests of the studied organizations as they appear in their givenopinions.Method: The authors have made a qualitative and quantitative study of the opinions.Theoretical perspective: The basis of the study is the organization theories that focus the self-interest oforganizations.Empiric: Information is taken from four Swedish Public Investigations: the New Company Act, International Accounting for Swedish companies, Abolition of the audit requirement for small and medium sized enterprise and Simplified accounting. Altogether 310 opinions have been given on these, out of which we have studied 59. Furthermore, we have collected information on tasks, activities and objectives from the websites of the opinion giving organizations.Conclusions: In the literature, we found, as mentioned, that organizations havet hree self- interests which we define as general self-interests.

As public libraries in Sweden receive the bulk of their budget from local government funding, which has stayed static or, at best, seen small increases, libraries have been faced with inadequate resources with which to satisfy increasing expectations from users. As few libraries are over-funded in the first place, ways may have to be found to combat this situation. The aim of this Masters thesis is to examine alternative sources of funding for Swedish public libraries, and my main focus of interest is that of sponsorship. The method used is a literature study combined with an empirical study, in which interviews were conducted with five persons each with long experience of working with public libraries. The literary study deals with the concept of sponsorship, and the motivations for companies to sponsor are also examined.

Based on a review of literature on evalution of public activities and in purpose to introduce amore general framework, this study describes a picture of the concept, context, motives,strategies, use and actors in Evaluation as these are experienced outside the field of libraryand information. The background is the increased need for" evaluations in public libaries and aneed for new LIS knowledge about it. The reviewed literature has its origin in differentdisciplinary contexts and the study include contributions from policy studies, sociologi,education research, business administration, philosophy and anthropology. The focus, though,is not placed upon differences in the literature but on similarities.The review is organised in six parts. In the first part a presentation is given of how evaluationsare conceptualized and its meaning in a historical perspective.

My essay explores the public view on smoking in Sweden over the last few decades. I've studied how changes in social structures through media, laws, studies and education has brought about a change in the opinions about smoking. I found that even though there have always been different opinions on smoking it seems to have become less accepted in the Swedish society, particularly in the past twenty years. I discuss the different reason as to why (and how) the view on smoking might have changed the last decades amongst the Swedish people. To be able to do this I have done interviews on which I have applied narrative analysis..

On the 17th of January 2002 the Swedish government presented a bill to theSwedish parliament, proposing ways of strengthening the Swedish democracythrough reforms for increased elements of participatory democracy. A publicreport on the state of the Swedish democracy had been released two years earlierwith similar enthusiasm for participatory democracy. However, the participatoryideals of these two documents were strongly criticised by a group of scholars.The aim of this thesis is to analyze and compare the arguments articulatedbetween the years 2000 and 2002 by the actors mentioned above, and to examinetheir relation to arguments concerning political participation, articulated bythinkers from previous times. By classifying the arguments into different groupsdepending on their content I find that both parties in the Swedish argumentationfocus on the effects of participatory democracy on political equality, on theefficiency of the political decision-making and the quality of the decisions beingmade, and finally on the personal character of the citizens. Among the argumentsarticulated by thinkers from previous times, similarities with the Swedishargumentation can be seen as well as important differences.

This Master?s Thesis examines the subject indexing of all Swedish gay fiction published from year 2000 until 2007. This is done from a queer theoretical- and domain analytical perspective. The study is conducted in the catalogue BURKsök created by BTJ which is the largest library media company in Sweden. The purpose of the study is to examine the heterosexual norm in fiction indexing and to study to what extent gay fiction is to be found by subject.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to describe and compare the debates regarding the public funded publishing company En bok för alla (EBFA). On two occasions, 1992 and 2007, the public funding was threatened, which lead to debates and protests. The funding was revoked in 2007. I want to examine if by studying a particular product of cultural policy, one can se tendencies to how the cultural policy in whole change over time.