Unmet Aspirations and Urban Malaise

This article analyses the gap between human aspirations concerning self-enhancement and corresponding outcomes in ten western European countries. Utilizing individual data for 14,300 respondents from the European Social Survey, four self-enhancement gap metrics are created: (1) the Ambition gap; (2) the Success gap; (3) the Wealth gap; and (4) the Authority gap. The findings suggest that subjective well-being (SWB) appears to be higher in rural than in urban communities. One reason for lower SWB among urban residents relates to their higher aspirations in certain areas of life. However, urban areas are apparently able to meet the financial expectations of their inhabitants far better than rural areas are, whereas an unmet craving for, e.g., success in rural areas appears not to affect SWB at all. Overall, there is a strong association between unmet aspirations and lower satisfaction with life. The added value of this paper is that it goes beyond existing explanations of the reasons behind urban malaise in developed economies.Peer reviewe

Performance of Local Employment Systems

At the national level the employment system consists of the set of institutions, and policies affecting institutions, which together moderate the level of production, employment and unemployment in the country (Schmid, G. & Gazier, B. eds. 2002. The Dynamics of Full Employment. Edward Elgar). These institutions include employment legislation, taxation policy and the education and training systems. However, the dynamics and the complexity of the national labour markets could only be understood by analysing the systemic character of employment at the regional and local levels. The regional and local social systems function as filters or restrictions, resulting in differing performance of local labour markets. The interaction between the labour market and the local educational and private household systems – including its various preferences and life-style options - is reflected in, and allowing for, differing rates of transition between alternative statuses at the labour market. This seems particularly valid in a country like Sweden, where there is a wide variation of functional labour markets in terms of size, differentiation, settlement and demographic structure. Also, the recent cut backs and weakened intervention of the welfare state in general combined with an increasingly dominating role of the public sector as an employer in regions with an ageing population suggest an emerging divergence in the performance of local labour markets. In this paper, we suggest that the performance of local employment systems should be evaluated in terms of the rate of activation of local pools of labour force and of immigration. Well functioning employment systems should facilitate voluntary and temporary entries to and exits from employment to other statuses, e g to and from education and training. Rapid activation should be facilitated of the local pools of unemployed and other non-employed including persons on long-term sick leave. Preliminary results from empirical analysis based on longitudinal data reveal that there is a wide variation in performance of Swedish local labour markets in these terms and that there are no signs of convergence over the period 1990-99. The results suggest that national policies to affect institutions within the employment system has to be synchronized with and supported by regionally differentiated measures to improve the local social systems, in particular within the local education system, to improve working conditions in certain sectors and also to promote local mobility between economic and non-economic sectors.

Att ta plats och göra skillnad: skolbibliotekariepraktiker i framgångsrika verksamheter

Book review of Ulrika Centerwalls (2022) Att ta plats och göra skillnad: skolbibliotekariepraktiker i framgångsrika verksamheter, Högskolan i Borås, Borås

Documentary Practices of Hospital Librarians in Evidence-based Medicine: the Example of Health Technology Assessment in Swedish Healthcare

Today’s healthcare rely on a basis of evidence-based medicine (EBM) and in modern healthcare there are demands for rational decision-making about new methods, technology and treatments. HTA (Health Technology Assessment) supports decision-making in healthcare and in this study we turn to documentary practices of hospital librarians in HTA, as well as how documentary practices shape and are shaped by the work and roles of hospital librarians. Five central documentary practices were identified as initial searching, negotiating a search strategy, the main searching, making a selection, and documenting the search process. These practices construct the work and roles of hospital librarians through different documents, for example formal guidelines for systematic reviews and various tools used for searching, selecting and documenting the search process

Groundwater response to precipitation events, Kalaloch, Olympic Peninsula, Washington

Tens of thousands of square kilometers of forestland in Washington are managed as working forests, primarily for timber production. The effects of timber harvesting on physical watershed processes continue to be the subject of intense research throughout the Pacific Northwest. Watershed analyses completed in Washington during the mid-1990s resulted in significant modifications to Washington\u27s Forest Practices Act and Rules. These measures mandate rigorous evaluation of potential effects of timber harvesting on slope stability. Although timber harvesting has been linked to an increase in surface erosion and mass wasting in the Pacific Northwest, most studies have focused on shallow landslide processes. The loss of canopy interception and evapotranspiration associated with timber harvesting and the resulting effects on groundwater levels and stability of deep-seated landslides are not well understood. In this study, I use field measurements to analyze subsurface water level rise and attenuation in response to precipitation events, and the Distributed Hydrology Soils Vegetation Model (DHSVM) to model potential changes in hydrology resulting from clearcut timber harvesting. The research site is a portion of a moderately steep watershed (2 sq-km) located 6 km southeast of Kalaloch, WA on the coast of the Olympic Peninsula. Slope gradients generally measure between 30 and 50 percent, with localized steeper and gentler slopes. Ten wells at the site are instrumented with pressure transducers that record hourly subsurface water levels. I use onsite and nearby precipitation measurements and pressure transducer data to characterize groundwater level response characteristics at the site between February 2005 and February 2007. This analysis shows subsurface water levels rise and attenuate rapidly in response to precipitation and usually reach peak levels within hours after the onset of precipitation and attenuate within days, regardless of the magnitude of the event. I also use Kendall\u27s Ï„ correlation analysis (Kendall, 1938) to evaluate the relationship between cumulative precipitation for a given event and peak well water level for the same event. Kendall\u27s τ values were most significant for between 3 hours and 13 hours of cumulative onsite precipitation in 6 of the 10 wells, with all of the most significant correlations falling between 3 hours and 48 hours with the exception of one well which had no significant correlations. Kendall\u27s τ correlation between subsurface water levels and open air precipitation measurements made at the nearby Black Knob Weather Station and linear regression analysis were also most significant with hours of cumulative precipitation as opposed to days or weeks. The DHSVM results show a 27.4 percent reduction in evapotranspiration when the research basin vegetation is converted from an entirely forested condition to an entirely shrub-covered condition with all other variables constant. This reduction in evapotranspiration is modeled to result in a slight increase in streamflow and a slight increase in soil moisture and groundwater level for the two year period from February 2005 through February 2007. The majority of this decrease in evapotranspiration and increase in streamflow and subsurface water occurs during the spring and early summer when evapotranspiration rates are high and water levels are below modeled maximum peak levels

Translating Scientific Results: Encouraging Reflective Policies as a Chance for Change

Peer reviewe

”Det känns som att jag bara sitter och väntar på att det ska explodera” - politisk påverkan på de kommunala folkbibliotekens verksamhet i sex sydsvenska regioner.

Public libraries are one of several institutions that uphold Swedish democracy. The representative liberal democratic model, expressed in the Library Act, is increasingly being questioned and challenged. Political actors, mainly from the radical right, advocate a democracy focused on the will of the people at the expense of the rights of individuals. With the notion of plural agonistics, public libraries can be seen as important arenas for debates and meetings between people, offering ways to handle conflicts within democratic institutions. Methodologically, this study employs the perspective of institutional ethnography, and the aim of this paper is to develop knowledge about public libraries’ experiences of political pressure and how this is enacted in a time of political turbulence. This paper reports findings from the first stage of a survey study directed at public library managers in 77 municipalities from the six southernmost regions of Sweden. Based on replies in these surveys, interviews were conducted with seven of the participating library managers. Findings show that the interplay between libraries and the local political level, and between national and local political levels, generally functions without notable opposition. Illegitimate political pressure is uncommon, but when it occurs, it is primarily triggered by issues connected to cultural diversity. Results further indicate that local public libraries tend to respond to illegitimate political pressure by development and use of professional policy documents, but also, in some cases, by avoiding certain activities