The National Library at a glance
Employees: 370
National Librarian: Vigdis Moe Skarstein
Vision and goals
The National Library shall be a multimedia centre of knowledge which will:
- Be among Europe's most exciting and modern national libraries
- Form the core of the Norwegian Digital Library
- Offer high quality knowledge and experiences
- Assist in the understanding of culture and technology
- Be an organization willing and able to change
The National Library (NB) shall be the premier source of information about Norway, Norwegians and Norwegian culture, and it is to be Norway's main resource for the collection, archiving and distribution of Norwegian media.
Its functions include establishing, preserving and making available a wide variety of collections.
Collections
The National Library owns and manages several unique collections. All are available for research and documentation, and most are accessible to the public through the National Library's general library services or via the Internet. These include:
- Unique manuscript collections (including handwritten manuscripts)
- special book collections
- music collections
- radio broadcasts from the 1930s up to the present day
- film collections
- theatre collections
- a large map collection
- posters
- photographs
- newspapers
The national bibliography
The National Library is to preserve and make accessible to the present and the future the information that shapes our society, regardless of how and in which medium it was published. Accordingly, the National Library is building the national bibliography (a catalogue of all Norwegian litterature) which acts a key to the collections.
A main pillar in the collection of materials is the Legal Deposit Act. It ensures that everything that is published in Norway can be found at the National Library. In addition, the National Library purchases or otherwise receives historical material, in part to make its collections complete, in part to maintain lending collections.
- The first Act appeared in 1697
- The present Act came into force in 1990.
- The Act covers all types of media, including digital documents.
Norwegian web sites are downloaded from the Norwegian top level domain of the World Wide Web and stored in the digital long term repository. At present, 40 million documents have been downloaded and stored. The NRK Norwegian radio historical archive has been digitized and stored.
The public
We want to offer easy access for as many users as possible to the heritage which has been placed in our care. You are welcome to our renovated /new National Library at Drammensveien 42, Oslo, where you can use our reading rooms and visit the exhibits and events that will bring out to you important parts of the cultural heritage which can be found in the National Library.
And of course you can visit our web site, which is an important channel to us. On August 15, 2005, when the library building was reopened, we also launched our redesigned web site at nb.no
A Digital National Library
The National Library of Norway has embarked on the process of digitizing ALL of its collection. The Norwegian cultural heritage will be transferred to digital formats for preservation and access purposes. How copyrighted material will be digitized and how access will be granted, will be decided in a dialogue with the rights holders.
Digitising the Collection of the National Library
Read more about the strategy, the digitisation initative, handling the digital material and the timeframe.
50,000 Norwegian books accessible on the net - at no charge and perfectly legal!
A timeline
1811 - 1849: After the end of the union between Norway and Denmark in 1814, The Oslo University Library (UBO) was assigned many national library functions that used to be in Copenhagen.
1989: A National Library branch was established in Mo i Rana. Its main task was to administer the new legal deposit act (1990).
1994: The Oslo University Library (UBO) was split in two parts, one of which was established as the new Oslo branch of the National Library. From now on, The National Library of Norway exists in two locations: Oslo and Mo i Rana.
1999: University Library functions were separated from the National Library in Oslo.
2005: The National Library opens the restored and new national library at Drammensveien 42, Oslo.
A house of contrast (pdf)
A Digital National Library (pdf)
Digitising the Collection at the National Library (pdf)
The new regulations for the Norwegian Copyright Act (pdf)
A tail with no end. The Norwegian National Library pilot project “The High North” – an evaluation after one year (pdf)
An Endless Tail (pdf). The National Library of Norway’s “High North” pilot project – Evaluation as at 1 October 2008
The document "Digitization of books in the National Library - methods and lessons learned" (pdf) describes the visions and their practical adaptation, our experiences and plans for the National Library's digitization programme.
