The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what role the new city library in Halmstad has for its users. The questions posed in this study are: What do the users actually do at the library? What roles are the most significant according to the users? Have the politicians succeeded in their intention of realizing a modern library according to the users? The theoretical starting point is Andersson?s and Skot-Hansen?s theory of four different roles of public libraries. In order to extend the model we added a fifth function; the one of aesthetical experience.

Hofstede constructed a culture dimension called Power Distance, measuring the inequality of Power. Germany and Sweden have relatively similar values according to his world-renowned research. But a series of interviews of Swedish entrepreneurs in Germany shows that these perceive a large difference in inequality of power in the two countries. This essay seeks to explain the difference between these subjective-qualitative experiences and the objective-quantitative data of Hofstedes Power Distance Index. We propose that a combination of differences in communication, exercise and visibility of power and formality influence the way Power Distance is perceived.

There is consensus in research, policy, business and many other areas around the benefits of creativity. Previous research shows that creativity is only spurred under certain conditions. Usually creativity is not associated with concepts such as control, deadline or cost effectiveness. Companies, by contrast, have the need for control and management of their operations, which implies that the two processes can be difficult to reconcile. A company that wants a high creativity while maintaining control and management is forced into a series of organizational compromises.

Companies spend huge amounts on communicating their brand through marketing. Many of these contact areas where the consumer comes in contact with the brand is con-trolled by the company. The brand image is also affected from outside the company. It can be from users, media, blogs etc.Burberry is an example of a company that got in trouble with their brand image after hooligans where associated with their products. If a company with a brand with a strong image is associated whith consumers that are not compatible with the target group the company wants, there is a risk of a negative affect on the brand image.Our purpose is to investigate and describe the phenomenom when a company brandimage is affected by being associated whith consumers not compatable whith, by the company, intended target group.We have chosen a qualitative research where we use a multiple case study.

The purpose of this study is to highlight some aspects of the increased usage of tablets in preschool environments by answering the questions: what does the tablet become in the preschool environment, how much freedom does the children have over its usage.To answer these questions a series of observations were made at two different preschools. The observations were then complemented by interviews with teachers at the same preschools.This qualitative study focuses on some of the didactic questions regarding the tablets, based on a theoretical framework that is within the design-oriented perspective; which addresses the children's? autonomy, the institutional framework and affordance.Our conclusion is that the tablet?s introduction in the preschool has helped the teachers in numerous parts of their documentation, but we can also see that the children's opportunities to make choices regarding the tablet are more limited than with any other resource on the preschool. In our results we also see that when the children get access to the tablet they receive a learning experience, which among other things, strengthens their language skills and their social interaction with each other..

As a soccer coach for youths with disabilities and as active soccer players, our thoughts regarding the basic principles of sports where awakened and how it corresponds with the possibilities of disabled youths participating in club organized sports. From that thought came the idea that, with our team as the point of original we should contribute with increased knowledge regarding the experiences of disabled youths doing sports. Using ethnography and co-operative observations we have researched both including and excluding factors that contribute to the possibilities of disabled youths opportunity to do sports. We have been able to distinguish that the youths in question feel that sports can be identity-building as well as give a sense of community. The study shows that the basic principles of sports does not correspond with reality because the lack of availability is the determinant factor. .

S2 CRM is a Customer Relations Management system built in classic ASP that runs on a web server servicing customers with varying needs. The purpose of this thesis work is to convert parts of the system to the web development environment ASP.NET. The purpose is also to gain knowledge of the framework itself. The ASP.NET environment is compared with another framework, JBoss Seam, in order to understand the differences and to evaluate the possibility of using another framework than ASP.NET, when building the new system. The outcome of this comparison is that although JBoss Seam is just as good, and in some aspects better than ASP.NET, the use of ASP.NET simplifies the continuation of development on the S2 CRM product.

Humor is as interesting as it is hard to define. It has travelled a long way since Hippokratestheory about body fluids and how someone, if lacking one of these, were called a humorist andwere laughed at.In this thesis we developed a new method for categorizing types of humor in Swedish comedyseries on TV. We chose six different shows (Grotesco, KvarteretSkatan, Morgonsoffan, Fredaghelaveckan, Parlamentet and Hjälp!) from the two most popular TV-channels in Sweden(SVT1 & TV4).We based or method on previous researchers? work and came to find some categories that wererepresented in most of the previous work. Our own method came to contain seven categorieswhich we believe is enough to obtain all kinds of humor in Swedish comedy series on TV.In our study we saw that most of the humor fell under the category that we called unnormalityhumor,a category which contained incongruity which many researchers believe is afundamental part of humor.Our opinion is that the unnormality-category became too wide in our study and that we perhapsshould have divided it into two or possibly three categories to see a more distinctive result.Nonetheless, our result offers an interesting starting point for future comparative studiesfocusing on similar subjects..

The aim of this thesis was to examine the ways in which librarianswork to stimulate the joy of reading in boys. Four children- andschool librarians were chosen for interviews in which they wereasked questions about boys' reading and the approaches they usedto help boys. The librarians were asked if they perceived boys'reading as problematic, what methods they used to stimulate thejoy of reading and if they thought it would be helpful to work withboys and girls in different ways. They were asked what theythought was the biggest challenges in changing the boys? attitudestowards reading and what they would do if they could choosefreely without any constraints in time or money.Aidan Chambers' "The circle of reading" was used to compare atheory about reading to the ways in wich the librarians worked andtheir thoughts about how to initiate reading.

This degree project handles acoustic measurements of the heat pump EcoAir 107, made by Enertech CTC AB. The sound from the three sound sources of the heat pump, fan, compressor and four way valve, have been measured to find out how they affect the total sound level of the product.Measures to attenuate the sound level have been developed and tested. By comparing these with the sound of the heat pump, in its original state, we have found out the measures which have best effects.The best attenuating measures came to be: taped openings and holes around the compressor space, isolating the top and the bottom of the whole construction, support of the fan bottom part and shielding of the sound source with a screen at a distance of 110 mmThese measures have been tested together and an average attenuation of the total sound level with 3,9 dB have been accomplished. In the front of the fan where the continuous sound is the strongest, the attenuation was 4,7 dB.This project is meant to be used as a guide by Enertech CTC AB:s during their future developing process..

The main purpose of this study was to compare the levels of anger and aggression between male and female Police Academy students (N=106) and male university students (N=100), using 2 psychometric anger instruments; Novaco Anger Scale-1998-S (NAS-1998-S) and Aggression Questionnaire-S (AQ-S). Another aim was to examine if there was a difference in anger and aggression between male and female Police Academy students. Questionnaires were handed out to Police Academy students in Växjö and the result was compared to university students from a previous study by Lindqvist, Dåderman & Hellström (2003). Analyses using a series of Independent sample t-tests showed a significantly lower level of anger and aggression in the Police Academy sample. There were no significant difference in anger and aggression between males and females with the exception of two subscales of the NAS-1998-S and AQ-S; females scored significantly higher on NAS Arousal and males scored significantly higher on AQ Physical aggression..

I detta examensarbete har jag valt att dokumentera och analysera en soffas stoppningshistoria. Soffan, som även kan kallas en färstmanssoffa, är i nyrokokostil och från ca 1870-talet. En kort beskrivning av historiken kring soffan återges samt lite stilhistoria från tiden då den är tillverkad. Jag har valt att ta tillvara på så mycket som möjligt av stoppningen på soffan, en så kallad bevarandetapetsering. Syftet var att dokumentera soffan, vilka material som använts och vilka åtgärder och förändringar som gjorts under årens lopp.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine what role the new city library in Halmstad has for its users. The questions posed in this study are: What do the users actually do at the library? What roles are the most significant according to the users? Have the politicians succeeded in their intention of realizing a modern library according to the users? The theoretical starting point is Andersson?s and Skot-Hansen?s theory of four different roles of public libraries. In order to extend the model we added a fifth function; the one of aesthetical experience.

The aim of this thesis is to investigate indexing consistency in LIBRIS, a Swedish national union catalogue, where searches can be carried out among almost five million titles. To calculate consistency, indexing terms of translations and indexing terms of documents in their original language have been compared. I have used a total of 100 such pairs in the study. There is a lot of different methods that can be used when consistency is calculated, in this study Hoopers and Rollings methods have been used since they are two of the most commonly methods used and also have the advantage of being fairly simple to use and understand. In the thesis, differences in consistency between indexing terms consisting of names and general indexing terms and differences in consistency between controlled indexing terms and uncontrolled indexing terms are also compared.

This paper is an assessment of whether the Nordic countries constitute an optimum currency area (OCA) or not. Hodrick Prescott-­?filtered data of real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and rate of employment are used to investigate the similarity of business cycles between the target countries through a series of correlation analysis with Sweden as the base reference country and also by using a linear regression model. Additionally there is an evaluation of trade volume and labour mobility between the countries. Our results indicate that Iceland had the least similar business cycles within the Nordic countries and that the area should therefore possibly comprise Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. .