Det mångspråkiga skolbiblioteket : En viktig fråga i teorin men en icke-fråga i praktiken?

Sammanfattning: While almost 23 percent of the students in the Swedish upper secondary school are foreigners, only a fraction of the school libraries’ collections consists of literature written in other languages than Swedish or English. This study examines how five school librarians experience the task of working with literature composed in foreign languages in the multicultural and multilingual school of today. The results of the qualitative interviews are analyzed in relation to the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries are working by, and also in relation to the theoretical framework of sociocultural theory and the theories on second language acquisition developed by linguist Jim Cummins. The study shows that while multilingualism is discussed as an important matter in the legislation and policy documents that the school libraries work by, the librarians in this study largely view the question of foreign literature as peripheral. Most part of the librarians connects first language reading to leisure-time activities rather than curricular activities, and stresses that the Swedish language should be prioritized in Swedish schools. The paper is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.