The Library as Shelter, The Library Under Shelter

Purpose and goal

Experiences from Ukraine show that libraries can play a central role in local communities during crises, providing a safe place for information, digital access and human encounters. The project explores how this experience can develop future civil protection in Sweden, partly through the library as a cohesive social place and by moving library resources into protected environments when needed. The goal is protection that helps people live, not just survive.

Expected effects and result

The project will show how a cold shelter can become a place where people can continue to live, learn and stay together and how the library can become a safe node when society is exposed to crisis. The result will be tested prototypes, methods and decision-making data that libraries, municipalities and emergency response actors can use and develop further. Particular focus is on the needs of children and on solutions that can be spread to more places.

Planned approach and implementation

We start where experience already exists, in Ukraine. Through study visits and conversations with libraries, we gather lessons from a society where protection is everyday life. The experiences are taken home to Oskarshamn, where the library becomes a test bed. Together with children, librarians and local emergency response actors, we conduct experiments, build prototypes, test them. Some kind of simulation/dialogue will be conducted with libraries on Gotland due to potential IDPs.