Arbetarrörelsens arkiv och bibliotek

Founded in 1902, we have since then been located close to Norra Bantorget, where several labour movement organisations have their head offices. We are an independent foundation with the Trade Union Confederation, the Social Democratic Party and the Swedish Government as co-trustees. We are a member of the IALHI.

Our mission is to collect, manage and record, and to facilitate the researching and studying public’s access to the material stored at the institution (freely translated from the first article of our constitution). Accordingly, we are open for everyone free of charge.

In addition to this, we also have a mission to promote research on labour history.

Contact us

Postal address

• Labour Movement Archives and Library
  Box 1124
  111 81 Stockholm
  Sweden

Visit us

• Visiting address: Upplandsgatan 4, Stockholm
• Maps and views: map, aerial view, street view
• Directions: walking directions from The Central Station
• Transportation: Resplus (trains & buses), SL’s journey planner (local buses & subway)

Hours of service

• Monday: closed
• Tuesday: 10:00 - 17:00
• Wednesday: 10:00 - 17:00
• Thursday: 10:00 - 19:00 (Jun-Aug 10:00-17:00)
• Friday: 10:00 - 15:00
• Saturday: closed
• Sunday: closed

Exceptions on holidays etc. 2010

• January 4-6: closed
• April 1-2: closed
• April 30: closed
• May 1: closed
• May 11-14 (= all of week 19) : closed
• June 24-25: closed
• July 6-16 (= weeks 27-28): no retrievals from our Runö stacks
• Weeks 28 and 30: no retrievals from our Grängesberg stacks
• July 20-30 (= weeks 29-30): closed

Being here doing research

Note: some links below lead to information in Swedish only.

Ground rules

You need to visit us for full access to our collections and search aids. Only a small portion is available online.

Our staff is here to assist you searching and requesting materials. We can however not conduct any advanced or deep investigations for your part.

We are both an archives and a library

…which is a good thing for you, enabling the study of both original and printed material, and even more. We strive to make a simple, uniform research environment for our researchers.

Our two departments do however have their own distinct characters, with slightly different methods, terminologies and completely different catalogues for searching the two main collections. Rules may also vary for requests and loans.

Plan ahead

You should plan your visit and your research carefully since studying original materials often is very time-consuming, and generally allowed only in our reading room. Basically this means: read, study what’s already been written (or not) in the subject, formulate questions to the materials and to us for making it easier to assist you.

Retrieval times are another reason to plan ahead, see below.

Nearly all materials are stored in closed stacks

You can not browse the shelves. Instead you need to search and lookup the materials and make a request: manually for some materials, through the computer for other.

Exceptions are microfilms, new books, the reference library and this years subscribed journals and magazines. They are all directly accessible in the reading room and public areas.

Scattered stacks means varying times for retrieval

Materials are stored in both in-house stacks and outside the city, meaning some materials can be retrieved within an hour while other materials may be accessible after a couple of weeks.

Shelf locations are found in our archival and library catalogues, but sometimes it’s just better to ask our staff for help. A very simple overview:

• U = Upplandsgatan, in-house stacks. Several retrievals per day.
• M = Metall. 1 retrieval per week.
• R = Runö. 2 retrievals per week.
• G = Grängesberg. 1 retrieval every other week.

You may need permission for access to archival materials

In some cases access to archival materials are restricted, mainly based on decisions made by the office of origin. You may need to apply for access, granted by, for example, the organisation or surviving relatives. As of 2008-09-29 some 193 archives of a total of more than 5000 were comprised by some kind of restriction.

Examples of restrictions and requirements for access:

• In some cases only a certain series or volume is inaccessible.
• Your research may be required to qualify as scholarly or at least “serious”.
• There may be a “20-year rule”, for example, meaning that you only have access to materials older than 20 years.

We’d like to have the results of your research

Did your research result in an article, a book, dissertation, paper or something else? Please consider giving us a copy of your work, and it will make a good contribution to our collections. Your effort may help others as well.

Leave a copy to the staff or send it to us. If it was published digitally you can just send us the URL. Thank you!