The aim of this master’s study is to examine the function of the public library in the local community at present. I have searched for the answers to the following questions: Which position has the public library in the local cultural policy? What characterizes each library and which are the priorities? What is the local profile of the public library? What cooperation partners does the public library have and what do they mean to the library? Does the public library intensify the local community in any way? To answer this, I have made three qualitative case studies. Interviews and collection of documents were carried out in three different communities. The people interviewed are library chiefs and local politicians. As a theoretic base I have used an analysis model, originally developed by Marianne Andersson and Dorte Skot-Hansen. The analysis model is designed to categorize the functions of the public library in the local community as: a cultural centre, a knowledge centre, an information centre, and a social centre. The analytical findings illustrate that all three libraries examined are clearly visible in the local cultural policy. The findings also reveal that all three libraries possess all of the functions of the analysis model, although some differences were found. One of the libraries is more distinct in the function as a knowledge centre, another is more distinct in the function as a cultural centre, and a third is more distinct in the function as a social centre. The libraries examined have several cooperation partners in the local community. The reasons why cooperation is important is partly economical and partly that it makes the library more visible in the local community. / Uppsatsnivå: D

Gerillakrigföring som metod i konflikter som inte är mellanstatliga är aktuella att studera ur ett svensktperspektiv. Ett ökat internationellt militärt åtagande föranleder valet av ämne, samtidigt som okonventionellatillvägagångssätt omgärdas av fascination. Uppsatsen undersöker vilka faktorer som ligger bakomframgångar med gerillakrigföring, i syfte att öka medvetenheten om de företeelser som behöver uppmärksammasi en konflikt med gerillakrigsinslag.I arbetet utnyttjas en induktiv metod kombinerad med fallstudier. Inledningsvis skapas en definitionsgrundför gerillakrigföring. Därefter prövas teorin om krigföringens principer som framgångselement på krigen iAlgeriet (1954-62) samt Malaysia (1948-57). De viktigaste resultaten är att framgångsfaktorer på taktisknivå skiljer sig marginellt mellan gerillakrigföring och konventionell krigföring. Vidare har interaktionenmellan civilbefolkningen, motivet för kamp och aktörerna som brukar gerillametoder framkommit somytterst väsentlig för utgången av de studerade konflikterna.Problemställningen för undersökningen är: Beror det på krigföringens principer att gerillataktik kan varaframgångsrik? Den avslutande diskussionen konstaterar att vid ett möte med okonventionella metodermåste hela existensen för en konflikt beaktas. / Avdelning: ALB - Slutet Mag 3 C-uppsHylla: Upps. ChP 02-04

I uppsatsens inledning påtalas att medier influerar samhället och därigenom människors sätt att vara och känna. För att utveckla arbetsmetoder som svarar mot samhällets syn på text framhålls att dagens bibliotekarier bör ta detta i beaktan. Syftet med undersökningen är att studera bibliotekariers arbetsmetoder i samband med lässtimulerande arbete i ett samhälle som ses stå inför ett nytt textlandskap. Resultatet är en kvalitativ fallstudie som undersöker bibliotekarierna i tvärgruppen Unggruppen på Uppsala Stadsbibliotek och deras upplevelser av fenomenet. I kapitlet ”Bakgrund och tidigare forskning” presenteras forskning om samtida text, lässtimulerande arbete för barn och unga och bibliotekariers arbete mot unga på folkbibliotek. Det teoretiska ramverket består av ett sociokulturellt perspektiv så som det beskrivs av Roger Säljö. Teorierna lyfter fram tankar om att människan kommunicerar och tänker inom en social kontext med hjälp av kulturella redskap. För att analysera de kulturella redskap som framträder används begrepp ur Colin Lankshear och Michele Knobels teorier inom forskningsfältet New literacies. Metodens analysmaterial består av sex kvalitativa intervjuer, en observation och en dokumentanalys. Undersökningen svarar mot frågeställningar om hur ett vidgat textbegrepp uppfattas, hur Unggruppen agerar genom sina kulturella redskap och om bibliotekets kontext påverkar Unggruppens arbetsmetoder. Slutdiskussionen visar på att Unggruppen anser att ett vidgat textbegrepp kan leda till att stärka ungas självförtroende och läslust. Slutsatsen förklaras via en metafor där ett vidgat textbegrepp liknas vid ett kretslopp som ses gynna både individ och medium. En institutionalisering av ett vidgat textbegrepp sätts i relation till Uppsala Stadsbiblioteks möjlighet att fungera som en kommersiellt neutral zon för samtida text. Resultatet visar även att Unggruppen främst medierar eller förmedlar nya kulturella redskap genom andras kompetenser varvid följderna av en sekundär eller direkt mediering behandlas. För att folkbiblioteket som fysiskt rum och kontext ska kunna erbjuda en plats för ungas literacyaktiviter framhålls avslutningsvis vikten av att utgå från innehållet i aktiviteten och den sociala handling som uppstår. / The introduction of this two years master´s thesis points out the influence of various media on society, and subsequent effects on human behavior and self-awareness. The modern day librarian needs to take this into account when developing new tools, which correspond to society’s view of text. The purpose of this study is to investigate how librarians engage in promoting reading in the changing textual landscape of today’s society. The result is a qualitative case study examining the views of the workgroup Unggruppen at Uppsala Public Library on this topic. In the chapter “Background and prior research” a presentation of research on contemporary text, the promotion of reading among children and teenagers and public library outreach towards the young is presented. A sociocultural perspective as described by Roger Säljö supports the theoretical framework. These theories highlight the idea of human subjectivity and communication within a social context by means of cultural tools. In order to be able to analyze the featured cultural tools, notions of theories by Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobels in the field of New Literacies are used. The material of the analysis consists of six qualitative interviews, one observation and an analysis of a document. This study approaches questions of how an “expanded concept of text” is perceived, how Unggruppen mediates its cultural tools and how the context of the library affects the development of tools employed by Unggruppen. The final discussion indicates that Unggruppen considers that the “expanded concept of text” might increase the rate of reading and self-confidence of young people.  The conclusion is explained trough a metaphor depicting the “expanded concept of text” as a cycle benefitting both individual and media. An institutionalization of the ”expanded concept of text” is put in relation to Uppsala Public Library’s role as a non-profit zone of contemporary text. The result of the study also shows that Unggruppen mainly mediates new cultural tools through the competence of others. Thus the effect of a secondary or a direct mediation is discussed. Finally, the importance of considering the content of young people’s literacy activities while preparing a space for this within the physical context of the public library is emphasized.  The overall conclusion, looking at the case of Unggruppen, is the democratic empowerment of young people within the library. This is made possible by the librarians’ continuous notion of emerging cultural tools within and outside the context of the library.

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the role of bibliotherapy in Swedish hospital libraries. The aim is to try to identify and evaluate the difficulties with using bibliotherapy in a hospital library. And also see what opportunities bibliotherapy can offer. Choice of method is case study with qualitative interviews with five hospital librarians and two family therapists who use bibliotherapy in treatment. What are their thoughts and beliefs about bibliotherapy? My study also aims to highlight the differences between bibliotherapy as described in the literature and the way it is described in practice. Literature studies show that the term bibliotherapy is difficult to define. It can be divided in two groups, interactive bibliotherapy and reading bibliotherapy. This case study indicates that the knowledge of bibliotherapy in hospitals is limited and that the work is not done consciously and strategically. The interviews show that the librarians working with books as health promotion and that they have a strong conviction that literature has a positive influence on health.

Diss. Uppsala : Univ., 2003.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögsk., 2004.

Diss. Lund : Univ., 2004.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2004.

Diss. Stockholm : Stockholms universitet, 2005.

The present thesis comprises two case studies of two multilingual pupils in second-ary school, focusing on the relationship between knowledge, language and learning through a comparison of literacy activities in the two school subjects, Textile Crafts and Social Studies. The theoretical framework is sociocultural and the research methods include ob-servations, interviews and artifact analysis of the literacy practices in the two sub-jects as well as analyses of spoken and written texts. The latter were performed using multimodal and systemic functional linguistics analyses. The results reveal that both school subjects can be described as mono-linguistic, and that the teachers teach mono- and multilingual pupils in the same way. Also, the two focus students, David and Sarah, were offered various multimodal texts in each of the two school subjects. However, David deflects many of the teachers’ text of-fers in the form of writing in both the literacy practices in both subjects, avoiding having to expose himself to situations in which he is forced to read or write. Sarah, on the other hand, used writing for different purposes and in different ways. Also, the semiotic resources she used were often more advanced and more complex com-pared to those used by David. Another important finding was that the teachers seemed to "tune in" with the students’, thus enhancing their own choices as to avoid-ing or using the language offered through different semiotic resources. A pedagogical implication of the study concerns how teachers and students are aware of students’ multilingualism and how this linguistic awareness is used in the classroom. This calls for more research on how to create teacher awareness about multilingual students’ need to develop linguistic competence in all school subjects in different languages. Another pedagogical implication is the importance of selecting texts that enable high support in relation to the nature of the task and its objectives, i.e. how texts function in relation to the task and what they afford.