The purpose of this thesis was to study the view of reading and reading promotion that emerges in the project presentations from the public libraries that the Swedish Arts Council granted money in 2012. We also wanted to examine how the libraries worked on promoting reading in these projects. To find this out, we used a directed content analysis and analyzed the material with the help of two different theories, one of the views of reading and one of the librarians role in mediation of literature. We found that the view of reading in these projects emphasizes that reading itself is important, the content and how to read is less important. For the non-readers new media can be a way into reading. To create joy of reading was the goal that most libraries expressed. The work with reading promotion was all about new ways of thinking and how to find new ways to reach the readers where they are. The methods could be traditional, like booktalks, or less traditional, like using tablets or joining readers in the forest.

<p>The concept of quality is difficult to identify clearly. Many attempts to define quality havebeen made, but the resulting definition remains vague.The quality concept (in the artistic sense) has since 1974 played a leading role in Swedishcultural policy. In the spring of 2009, a publication, named “Kulturutredningen” waspublished. This report suggested a number of changes for the Swedish cultural policy. One ofthe changes suggested is an altering of the quality concept which could lead to a lessimportant role, for the quality concept, in Swedish culture policy. This would also have aneffect on how the Swedish government distributes subsidies to the cultural sector.The purpose of this thesis is to identify how The Swedish Art Council and the County Councilin Stockholm deal with the problematic aspects of quality and how they define it. Ininterviews, the handling officers in the area of dance and theatre, has described their views onquality and how they use it in their work with distributing subsidies to the cultural sector.Through these interviews we have noted similarities as well as differences. One of thedifferences that we discovered is that the Swedish Art Council, contrary to the CountyCouncil in Stockholm, always uses an external group of people, working in the cultural sector(for example as directors or choreographers), to help them decide who will receive subsidies.Nevertheless, both the County Council of Stockholm and the Swedish Art Council havealmost identical views on the definition of quality. That is: the definition has to be individualand is therefore subjective.We have also discovered signs of the New Public Management movement appearing in theorganisations. For example, in work of the Arts Council these signs were found in the designof the Art Councils application for subsidy.</p>

The concept of quality is difficult to identify clearly. Many attempts to define quality havebeen made, but the resulting definition remains vague.The quality concept (in the artistic sense) has since 1974 played a leading role in Swedishcultural policy. In the spring of 2009, a publication, named “Kulturutredningen” waspublished. This report suggested a number of changes for the Swedish cultural policy. One ofthe changes suggested is an altering of the quality concept which could lead to a lessimportant role, for the quality concept, in Swedish culture policy. This would also have aneffect on how the Swedish government distributes subsidies to the cultural sector.The purpose of this thesis is to identify how The Swedish Art Council and the County Councilin Stockholm deal with the problematic aspects of quality and how they define it. Ininterviews, the handling officers in the area of dance and theatre, has described their views onquality and how they use it in their work with distributing subsidies to the cultural sector.Through these interviews we have noted similarities as well as differences. One of thedifferences that we discovered is that the Swedish Art Council, contrary to the CountyCouncil in Stockholm, always uses an external group of people, working in the cultural sector(for example as directors or choreographers), to help them decide who will receive subsidies.Nevertheless, both the County Council of Stockholm and the Swedish Art Council havealmost identical views on the definition of quality. That is: the definition has to be individualand is therefore subjective.We have also discovered signs of the New Public Management movement appearing in theorganisations. For example, in work of the Arts Council these signs were found in the designof the Art Councils application for subsidy.

The purpose of this thesis was to study why public libraries and athletic clubs want to collaborate and how the collaboration can promote reading to children and young people. The Swedish Arts Council granted three million Swedish crowns to public libraries and athletic clubs that collaborated during 2013 and 2014. The outcome was several reading promotional projects directed towards children and young people active in athletic clubs. A qualitative content analysis has been made on the project applications. The findings were that through collaborating with athletic clubs the libraries seek to address a target group hard to reach, develop new collaboration forms and partners. Children and teenagers will learn the importance of reading by educating coaches, trainers and parents to be reading role models. The projects seek to make reading easy and fun. This was accomplished by meeting the participants in an environment they feel comfortable in and turning reading into a part in their everyday life. Some of the methods being used in the projects are reading competitions, book discussions, encouraging storytelling and writing together with easily accessible literature in several formats, for example audiobooks. The collaboration form differs from project to project; some projects have a clear division between the two parts. Others seek to have a close collaboration using each other’s qualification to create a long-lasting collaboration that profits everyone involved.

This study is meant to examine and analyze the government’s and government agencies’ use of the concept of quality. To do this the definition of the term quality has been divided into two different terms, quality of cultural policy quality and artistic quality, to better understand the term. The material used in this study consists of the government proposition Tid för kultur 2009/10:3, SOU 2009:16, and the annual reports of Statens kulturråd and Konstnärsnämnden 2019. The annual reports have been studied to find out how Statens kulturråd and Konstnärsnämndens use the term quality, and how quality guides them in their funding of different artforms. In conclusion the importance and the use of the term quality is discussed.