The purpose of this Masters thesis is to investigate the role of link collections in Swedish public libraries mediation of Internet resources. The study is focusing on the effects on the contents and the structure in the link collections when the target group is immigrant users. This is done through literature studies completed with an examination of two link collections containing multi-cultural and multi-lingual material and qualitative interviews with the two librarians who are in charge of the collections. The major questions raised in this study are: What function do the link collections have for the public libraries? What is the difference in working with traditional, printed material compared to the work with Internet resources? And how are the selection of Internet resources and the structure of the link collections affected when the collection is intended for immigrant users? The main results are that link collections in public libraries can give a concrete form to political guidelines.

The aim of this Master?s thesis is to examine how librarians in a Swedish public library view and discuss mediation of fiction. The questions posed in this study are: How do the librarians want to work with mediation of fiction? What type of literature should be provided according to them? How do they express that they relate and should relate to their users? The theoretical starting-points are three categories extracted from Jofrid Karner Smidt?s doctor?s dissertation Mellom elite og publikum: the approach to users, strategies for mediation, and ideals for mediation. The empirical material was gathered through focus group interviews with librarians in a public library.

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how city librariesmaintain the intellectual freedom in their Internet service. Thediscussion about Internet filters has been quiet in Sweden forseveral years, so I wanted to see if there had been an increased useof filters. I also wanted to see if the city libraries regulated theInternet service in another way. I sent a survey to 100 libraries andgot answer from 83. To explain what intellectual freedom is, I usedStuart Hamilton?s theory about intellectual freedom in the librarycontext.

Our aim in this work has been to redesign ModernFamilies and make a user-friendly interface for people with aphasia. The focus has been to identify general issues they might face while using different technology and applications, in order to find better alternative design for ModernFamilies, with a focus on usability. To approach this issue, we used a qualitative method. Our study includes several interviews and observations preformed in conjunction with the AGNES project (AGeing in a NEtworked Society) and speech therapists. Aphasia requires simple design that in the same time gives them support to understand and use technology and different applications.

Syftet med denna studie var att analysera skriftligt arbetsmaterial och offentliga informationsdokument som ligger till grund för förändringsarbete för ett ökat brukarinflytande gällande sociala omsorgsinsatser och servicetjänster i ordinärt boende, det vill säga det egna hemmet. Vi valde att studera Örebro kommun och detta genom en kvalitativ metod i form av en litteraturgranskning. Vårt teoretiska fundament har bestått av socialtjänstlagen, Lag om kommunal befogenhet att tillhandahålla servicetjänster åt äldre, Lag om valfrihetssystem, salutogent synsätt, Kasam och empowerment. Vårt resultat visar att Örebro kommun har infört fyra medel för ett ökat brukarinflytande. Dessa är: förändrad biståndshandläggning, Lag om kommunal befogenhet att tillhandahålla servicetjänster åt äldre, Servicetorget med lotsarna samt Lag om valfrihetssystem.

In this Bachelor thesis I explore sound and room as elements in design of user interfaces, both theoretical and practical in a specific application domain, to identify some of the advantages and disadvantage associated with these elements. As application domain I studied email clients and their usage at home amongst students at Blekinge Institute of Technology. In the study I found an activity, which seems to be highly distributed in the physical room where the user is located. The activity was notification of email and could take place in an arbitrary location of the home. I then augmented this activity with ideas from my theoretical assumption about room and sound. The result was a rule-based agent for notification of email, which primarily uses sound as interaction style..

In early January 2010 the authors participated in a meeting with the chief engineer for a company in which a central part is manufacturing of printed circuit boards (PCB). At this meeting it emerged that the machinery and production methods have changed substantially since the early 1990's. The spreadsheet for preliminary production time calculations by the company is today based on conditions from almost 20 years ago. The company has over the years been trying to adjust the spreadsheet template. The result of these adjustments has filled it with historical residue, something which makes the template difficult and time consuming when the primary user tries to handle it.The purpose of this study was to help the company increase its accuracy in the representation of the production times for the different PCB-based products by developing a new costing model based on an already existing but inadequate spreadsheet template. The company also expressed the wish that the new costing model would be less time consuming to work with.The methods used to achieve the goal are interviewing, participatory observations and meetings with relevant persons. The data obtained were analyzed using the theory on PCB production and visualization of data.

This report describes the development of an application in collaboration with Designingenjörerna AB. The company has worked for a long time with a community platform and they required an application where users can create their own unique profile representations, called Avatar Creator. An Avatar Creator is computer based application, which makes it possible to create a virtual character. The problem area behind this is that, large websites require a lot of administrative work when people upload profile pictures on different community pages. They can contain abusive material or pictures of other people rather than those who created the profile.The questions in this report are, how can an Avatar Creator help user to get a unique profile of himself? What are the advantages and disadvantages of an Avatar Creator? How to create a user-friendly application?To understand how an Avatar Creator works and get ideas to create an application, exiting Avatar Creators were reviewed on the Web.Collaborative work with Designingenjörerna AB was done to pin down the requirements for the Avatar creator application.

In recent years seemingly everything has become digital. Some areas, like classical sports, have been slower to adapt to new technical development. Golf is an example of this. Usually when people play golf they bring their clubs, golf balls and a paper scorecard on to the golf course. The advantages of keeping score in a digital way areevident.

The number of smartphones are constantly increasing, 2010 approximately 200 million unitswere sold globally and the figure is predicted to increase to 1 billion in 2016. The increased useof smartphones also carries many risks, for example many smartphones are connected to theInternet. This is a possible way for hackers to gain access to user devices. Smartphones are wellrepresented in research on its safety, while research on its use and users? awareness often leavesmore to be desired.

A large part of the Namibian low income population lack access to grid distributed electricity. This mean they are effectively shut out from basic functions such as lighting, information technologies and hygienic food handling. Hence, finding ways of providing affordable off-grid electricity is an important, not to say critical, task.This master thesis is an innovation and concept development project that has been carried out in cooperation with organisations in Sweden and Namibia. The purpose of the project has been to (1) develop a concept for off-grid electricity supply in Namibia and (2) to gain a deeper knowledge within the area of innovation and product development for the Base of the Pyramid population, i.e. the poorest, but largest, socio-economic part of the global population.Essential in this project has been to acquire user understanding and to identify user needs to create a foundation for developing the concept.

In this Bachelor's thesis the result from a Delphi study regarding FRBR, performed by Yin Zhang and Athena Salaba in 2007 and published in 2009 ? What is next for Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records? A Delphi study ? is analyzed by qualitatively interviewing professionals active within the library and information science field in Sweden. The results are compared and possible deviations and adjustments are illuminated and discussed. The purpose of the thesis is to determine the topicality of the Delphi study in 2011 from a Swedish perspective. Conclusions made from the thesis shows that the main areas are still the same, but adjustments regarding the relative order of issues might be needed; primarily a shift of focus from theoretical to practical issues.

The aim of this paper is to investigate who the visitors are at a children's department at amain library in a larger municipality, and for what purpose they use it. We discuss: Is therea difference between various user groups, and if so, how do they differ'? Which library rolesdoes the children's department have? Does the children's department serve as a local libraryfor those who live in the immediate surroundings or as a main library for the whole municipality?The paper is based on a user survey performed in the spring of 1996 at the City Library ofGothenburg. 417 visitors and five staff members were interviewed.The children's department is used by various groups of people, from young children to seniorcitizens. The library roles are, among other things, an independent learning center and formaleducation support center.

Digital marketing has been changing continuously and rapidly since the introduction of Web2.0 ten years ago (Lin, Li, Deng, & Lee, 2013). Companies are now engaging their users intheir digital marketing by providing with interactive contents in digital campaigns. The digitalcampaigns are getting more converge with SNS (social networking sites) in order to let the usershare the content with others and therefore the e-WOM (electronic word of mouth) helps thecompanies digital campaigns to be shared by more users (Moran, Muzellec, & Nolan, 2014).The interactive content in the digital campaigns have shown to provide for engaged users andtherefore leads to loyal users. The reason for this has its roots in the culture of consumptionthat has brought our everyday consumption to a whole new level where we no longer justconsumes a product, we are the brand (Davis, 2013).The study, Click here for solidarity, aims to explain the interactive phases and rhetorical elementsthat companies use to engage the user to interact with the content of the digital campaigns.The study is based on four digital campaigns in four different market areas in order to providewith an overall picture of how companies work with interactive and rhetorical elements. Thusthe study falls into the area of marketing and branding.

The purpose of this Master?s thesis is to examine and analyze the discourse concerning a new public library in Stockholm. The paper further discusses how this discourse corresponds with what is written about public libraries in a number of national and international documents. To do this I have utilized the discourse theory of Laclau and Mouffe. By using some of their instruments I have established the discourse around a number of keywords.