The Liberals presented the proposal, which will now become government policy, in connection with the Gothenburg Book Fair in September.
At a time when journalists and authors risk prison sentences and censorship, it is important to be able to collect books in this way, says Minister of Education Simona Mohamsson (L) to Dagens Nyheter.
The hope is to provide a historical perspective and also highlight books that were previously considered dangerous by certain regimes, but are now classics - including George Orwell's "1984" and Astrid Lindgren's "The Brothers Lionheart", which was banned in Czechoslovakia during the communist era.
The idea is that the literature should be accessible to researchers, both from Sweden and abroad.
However, Malmö already has the Dawit Isaak Library, named after the imprisoned Swedish-Eritrean journalist and author. It has been operating since 2020 in premises belonging to the Malmö City Archives and contains more than 1,500 banned books.
But Mohamsson does not see a national library as a competitor but as a complement.
We have a national library that I think should have this responsibility. That doesn't mean that several initiatives are not needed in different directions, but KB needs to take a holistic approach, she tells DN.
