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The aim of this thesis is to explore how some public libraries in different parts of Sweden plan to work with the the Swedish national minorities and their languages: the indigenous Sami’s and the Sami languages; the Swedish Finns and the Finnish language; the Tornedalers and the Meänkieli speaking (Tornedalen Finnisch-speaking); the Roma and the Romany Chib; and the Jews and Yiddisch. As minorities they share tragic experiences with many other minorities in the world, and some of them more than other. They all have special rights according to the Library act in Sweden and other acts. The Swedish authorities have a mission to try to save and revitalize the threatened languages and the libraries are an important part in this.

The thesis examines 46 applications from libraries to the Swedish Arts Council within the framework of the government grant called Strengthened Libraries. The theoretical and methodological point of departure is the WPR-approach (What’s the problem represented to be) formulated by Carol Bacchi. The source material, the applications, is studied with qualitative content analysis.

The analysis is divided in three parts: the problem or the need that the libraries are trying to solve; might there be something under the surface that is not expressed; and the solutions and the expectations that’s the libraries hope for. The bigger questions are: what are the libraries missing in their work with the national minorities and how do they want to solve the different problems that they have? Is there more focus on some of the languages? And can the results tell us something about the libraries’ view on the national minorities?

Some conclusions are: the three territorial languages/groups, i.e. the Sami, the Finnish and the Tornedalers dominate. These groups and languages have a very long history in Sweden. The Sami people have rights as an indigenous group as well. There are more and more efforts and programs directed to the Roma people. The least represented language in the applications is Yiddisch.

Some of the more common problems are access to minority language literature; another problem is educating librarians about the minority groups, their languages and how to assist the minorities by listening to them in a inclusive way. All applicants have plans, on a smaller or larger scale of how to work with the national minoritie  s. It happens a lot in this area in Sweden, so there is a need for more research and there is a lot of research material to work with.

This is a two-years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.