Nyanlända och skolbibliotek : En studie om skolbibliotekens möjligheter att bidra till integration

Sammanfattning: Studies have shown that public libraries are important meeting places to support integration. However there are not many studies including Swedish school libraries and integration. The purpose of this paper is to explore newly arrived and multilingual pupils visits in school library to develop new knowledge about school libraries possibility to support integration. This study is based on the following questions: 1. How do school librarians perceive their work with newly-arrived and multilingual pupils? 2. Which methods are used and how are they noticed in school libraries? 3. In what way can school libraries be meeting places for integration? We used two different methods. First we observed when 10 year old pupils visited the libraries and then qualitative interviews were used to get answers from librarians. We applied parts of Diaz model of integration and also earlier related research to analyze the empirical data into categories. We found that cooperation with teachers, social skills and structure of working methods could be important keys to school libraries to support integration. The results show that school libraries can be both spontaneous meeting places for pupils where they could talk to someone who challenges their point of view and also structured meeting places where newly- arrived meet others for different activities. The librarians themselves experienced duality to the school library as an open meeting place.