Alla familjers bibliotek? En fallstudie kring hur folkbiblioteken i Malmö stad görs tillgängliga för spädbarn med flerspråkiga familjer

Sammanfattning: The aim of this master thesis is to investigate how the public libraries in the city of Malmö in Sweden, work with and towards babies under the age of one and their parents, with a specific focus on multilingual families. We also aim to investigate the awareness amongst the librarians in their meeting with this group. For this we use critical theory and an intersectional perspective using mainly the work of Paulina de los Reyes and Diana Mulinari. The method being used is a qualitative case study and we have collected our material from four different libraries in Malmö. We use interviews with librarians, observations of the library rooms and have analyzed the means of communication towards multilingual families with babies under the age of one. The intersectional perspective is being used to get a complete overview of a heterogeneous group and to see how different aspects such as ethnicity, class and gender all work together. Part from this, we use concepts about early childhood literacy, family literacy and multilingualism. The conclusions that were made are that even though we can see a mostly high awareness about the heterogenous group multilingual families with babies under the age of 1 among the librarians, there are still a couple of changes that could make the libraries more accessible for this target group. These things are for example a higher use of translated signs and material from the International library in Stockholm or the use of pictograms in the library rooms. When it came to the means of communication there were problems in who and where racialized people were being represented in pictures and in text. An important factor is the importance of continuing education amongst the librarians when it comes to critical thinking in their work. Without critical thinking and an inclusive attitude from the libraries, our conclusion is that they cannot be accessible to everyone, which is their purpose according to the library law in Sweden, IFLA and leading documents for the city of Malmö.