Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Swedish Media on US elections

There is a lot of the USA presidental election in Swedish media these Days .The whole weekend has been full of programs and debates . Swedens public services channel TV 1.has their program "Godmorgon Sverige"(the swedish eqvivalent of "Godmorning America") producing and sending the program (with its presenters and staff) from Washington DC november 3-5th !TV4 the biggest private television channel does the same with their version of morning TV too !

The Local a webbased nespaper in english about Sweden also writes that "US election Fever hits sweden". With so mutch media coverage and the fact that US politics affects Sweden to maybe we swedes should be able to vote in the US Presidental election too? ;)

Swedish emigrant Institute gets a little money, but closes its research department until the end of the year and still faces a very uncertain future

Hello again all friends of Swedish genealogy. I have to apologize for not writing for a while. but I did not think I had much to write about.

A small Happy not it sthat the Swedish Emigrant Institute has recieved 2 donations of money.
It recieved 1.6 miljon swedish kronor (around 205 000 dollar) from the The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation to be able to complete the Emigrant Database EMIBAS. The database contains 1 million Emigrants from sweden to other countries taken from church records. The present database is to old it is impossible to add new information and it is also impossible to complete the system. Attemps to do that before have been unsuccesful since when the money attatched to it has run out the job has been left halfdone. I really hope it will be better this time.

The Swedish-American of the Year Barbro Osher has decided to donate 100 000 dollar (around 798 000 swedish kronor) to the Institute "It will be used to try to reconstruct the Institutes activities" says Lars Hanson (the present head of the Institute)according to an interview in the local newspaper Smålandsposten.

As I have written on the blog before there have been a lot of turbulence around the Swedish Emigrant Institute this year. There is lack of money, the Local governement and the county governement wants to merge the Institute with the local museum and a local archive but the Swedish Emigrant Institute have refused and so the local governement and county has cut all their funding as well as resigned from the Swedish Emigrant Institutes board of directors.

There have also been discussions of renting or moving parts of the exibitions to other places.
For now the battle ax seems to be buried temporarely. But the new donations hardly helps the Institutes all economical problems .I think they will have to cooperate with someone to be able to function in the long run.
The Swedish Emigrant Istitute has also recently closed its research deparment for new enquieries for the rest of the year.
One reason is to be able to answer the back log of all questions that has been send in by e-mailor letter .another reason is the uncertain futute. hopefully the research department can open again next year but it is far from sure.