In this report the aim is to give an overview of what volunteers, in a small town of Sweden, can do to reinforce the obligatory second language education provided by the local government. I have answered my main questions: What reinforced language education do the volunteers provide to the adult second language learners? How do the local government employee teachers value the work that the volunteers provide? How does the work relate to science and the regulatory documents regarding second language acquisition? I have made interviews with 7 different sources. My main interest has been what the volunteers actually do when they meet the second language learners. And to know if their work has support in second language science, I have read several researcher’s publications to know what they say about second language acquisition in general. I have also described the basic linguistic vocabulary by giving a background to the study of language in general. In my analysis I have used a sociocultural approach in my weaving of the pedagogical work that the volunteers provide. The conclusion is that they mainly give social awareness and that they reinforce the functional categories of the spoken language. The teachers that were asked about the reinforced language education stress the importance of the work. Both language science and the Swedish regulatory documents regarding second language acquisition are found in their work.

The aim of this thesis is to study the expressions of Swedish Library managers about the use of volunteers in public libraries: 1, their views on advantages and disadvantages with volunteers, 2, what tasks they think can be placed on volunteers. 3, how the volunteers work is organized, 4, how library operations are affected by the use of volunteers. The purpose is to understand the impact volunteers has on public libraries and through Michnik´s modification of Coblentz’ tree aspects of sustainable organizations discuss how this can affect the public library as an organization. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with three Library Managers and recorded in Zoom. The data were analyzed with qualitative data analysis and then discussed based on the concept of sustainable organization. The study shows that the Library Managers have both positive and negative attitudes towards volunteers. According to the Library Managers volunteers can both strengthen the relationship between the public library and the local community and the citizens' engagement in their library. The Library Managers finds that volunteers contribute with competence and new perspectives to the public library. But according to the Library Managers the public and some politicians have a very shallow understanding of what the public library is and what librarians do. This makes the Library Managers fear that librarians in the future might be replaced by volunteers to cut costs. The thesis shows that volunteers can contribute to – but also undermine – the sustainability of the public library as an organization.

The aim of this master thesis in Library and Information Science is to develop deeper knowledge of what is enabling or limiting the volunteer activities Lending an Uppsalabo. The perspective used is to understand how the volunteers’ involvement in new innovative services can expand the democratic work of the library. Furthermore, the intention is to examine whether the meetings between newly arrived and local residents, according to the volunteers' opinions, strengthen social ties and networks and whether links between newly arrived and Swedish society arise through the volunteers' cooperation with the public library. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight volunteers located in Uppsala. The interviews, together with volunteers’ reports were analysed and the method for analysing was theory driven and discussed with a set of theoretical concepts; bridging social capital, integration, high- and low-intensive meeting places and linguistic competence, which provided opportunities for interpreting the empirical material from different perspectives and accomplishing a theoretical discussion. The results show, according to the analyses of the volunteers' statements, that the meetings between newly arrived and local residents can strengthen social networks and create links between the newly arrived and Swedish society, which favors both communicative and social integration. Furthermore, according to the volunteers' opinions, the volunteers’ desk with its place in the library provides an arena for low-intensity meetings serving as a social meeting place and a place for language development. Additionally, through active citizenship, the volunteers wanted to create a new activity within the society to help newly arrived to integrate into society and this is one of the motive for participation.