Spaces of Being: Finding a Sense of Place in Katherine Mansfield’s “Prelude” and “Bliss”

This essay examines how the characters experience a sense of place in two of Katherine Mansfield’s modernist short stories, “Prelude” (1918) and “Bliss” (1918). Geographers have during the past century developed and problematized the relation between space, place, and human beings. The concepts of space and place are means for us to better understand our place in the world by relating ourselves to other people as well as our surroundings. We experience a sense of place when we can find a sense of security in a physical place, in the company of another person, or by the attachment to a material object. The analysis of Mansfield’s “Prelude” is conducted on an individual level in order to differentiate how the characters form a sense of place in shared spaces. It focuses on how children and adults, and men and women form a sense of place in relation to being inside or outside the home. The analysis of “Bliss” focuses primarily on one character and concerns a societal sense of place, i.e. how a sense of place can be a place in society and not just a place in something that is familiar

Bibliotekariers diversifierade profession : en studie av folkbibliotekariers upplevelser av en yrkesroll i förändring

Public libraries have in recent decades been affected by widespread cultural, political and societal changes and there are several opinions about what public libraries’ role in society should be. Three major areas that has largely affected the development of public libraries and thus librarianship are: the academization of the library- and information science educational programs, professionalization of the profession, and new technologies within information and communication practices. The overall intention of this study is to, from a librarian perspective, discuss how various types of change can affect primarily the library profession but also the library as place seeing the two are closely connected. The purpose of this thesis is to examine how public librarians relate to their contemporary and future profession in relation to change within the library. We conducted nine interviews with public librarians in Malmö with the aim to gain a deeper understanding of how public librarians relate to their professional role. The study is based on an example of organizational change within the city of Malmö and focuses on what attitudes towards the approaching changes can be found among librarians. A secondary objective is to examine if librarians share the same view of the profession or if there are different ways to look at librarianship and the future of the profession. We place our study within the field of library- and information science and we use theory of professions as a framework and phenomenological theory as a perspective. Theory of professions serves to more closely examine the characteristics of the library profession, and what knowledge and competences the library profession is made up of. The phenomenological perspective serves to give the study a direction: a focus on the respondent librarians’ experiences and perceptions of their professional role and of change within the profession. The result of this study show that there are different perceptions and experiences of the professional role among librarians in Malmö. There are also different perceptions of change within the profession. The professional role showed to be closely connected to the workplace and thus the librarians portrayed multiple different roles. Regarding the future of the profession, the librarians expressed two major viewpoints that can be seen as contrasting: a more traditional view of the profession and a focus on the library as a meeting place with emphasis on social aspects of the profession. Albeit their different views on future developments, they all share a common understanding of literature promotion, culture, and being advocates of democracy as main values of librarianship

A Postmodern Rendering of Society and Everyday Life in Renata Adler’s Speedboat

The operational experience of a horizontal segment well within the hard brittle shale layer of Longmaxi Formation in the southern Sichuan area demonstrates that the high-density oil-based drilling fluid (HDOF) induced down-hole working conditions(high-temperature, high-pressure, and solid-phase-dominance)directly impact the stability of the wellbore wall. Focusing on the impact of bottom-hole osmotic pressure and solid phase content and a series of density-reduction field tests, we identified suitable countermeasures. In this paper, we discuss the impact of high osmotic pressure and operational measures, and provide details of the field tests, which indicate that maintaining a higher osmotic pressure at the bottom-hole can reduce the formation pore pressure of the bottom-hole, widen the fluid density window, and maintain the stability of the wellbore wall. By improving the HDOF formula, such as using new treatment agents (e.g., polymer-modified nano-sealing agent and ultra-micro barite weight additive) and optimizing the solid particle size distribution of HDOF, we can effectively address the down-hole problems. The field test of “pressure-controlled drilling + density reduction” in horizontal drilling operations was found to reduce the complexity of down-hole faults, improve the rate of penetration, and reduce overall costs