National Library of Sweden

The Royal Library in Stockholm (Swedish Kungliga biblioteket ) is Sweden's National Library. It has the task to collect all the sound files, images, and print productions published in Sweden and store.

The collections of the library can be used by anyone, but it is primarily intended for students and researchers. Objects that are part of the Swedish collection may not be borrowed home, books and other writings, however, can be studied in the reading rooms of the library.

The Swedish Collection

The Swedish collection of the library contains nearly 20 million copies. Besides books, it contains, among other posters, pictures, manuscripts and advertising. The audiovisual collection consists of more than 7 million hours ingested material.

Part of the library holdings are also people archives, for example, by Astrid Lindgren, August Strindberg or Dag Hammarskjöld.

The required copies

According to the existing legal deposit law, all publishers of printed material, a so-called mandatory copy of their printed products that are distributed in Sweden, send them to the National Library and six other academic libraries. The music, film, television and radio producers have to hand in the same manner copies to the library. In certain cases, however, only part of the goods must be delivered.

The law stems from the firm order from 1661, which imposed all book printers in the country to send two copies of each of them printed copy to the royal chancery. Of these, one copy to the National Archives ( Riksarkivet ) and the other at the Kungliga was passed biblioteket. However, this Regulation was rather the monitoring and possible censorship as a library purposes, ie Documents to preserve them for posterity.

Library-related cooperation

As authority, the Kungliga biblioteket has the national responsibility for the coordination and development of the supply of information in the field of higher education and research. Among other things, the central collective agreement license agreements to facilitate access to the various databases, biblioteket an object of the Kungliga.

The building

The library building is located in the park Humlegarden in the Östermalm district in central Stockholm.