National Library Of The Netherlands Research Articles

Hungarica digitalia: Hongaarse bronnen in Nederlandse digitale collecties van archieven, musea en bibliotheken

We live in a Golden Age for doing research on Dutch-Hungarian relations, as so many Dutch archives, museums and libraries digitise their collections and new research environments became available. The author describes in this article shortly the new trends in digital humanities and introduces recently digitised or born digital material and new available digital collections with Hungarian sources on the history of Dutch-Hungarian relations or at the Utrecht City Archives, The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the Amsterdam City Archives, the digital library Delpher of KB – National Library of the Netherlands and the Dutch web archive of the same library.

A Robotic Storage Facility for the Dutch National Library Collections

ABSTRACT The KB National Library of the Netherlands (KB) is developing a new offsite storage facility for rehousing its entire physical collection. In an effort to become more sustainable, the national collection will be housed in a purpose-built passive building without elaborate heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems. Using a super high-density automated storage and retrieval system (ASRS), the combination of building and collections plays a major role in establishing a safe climate. Since control over the indoor environment in this new building is limited, it is vital to study the hygrothermal behavior of the building and collection by modelling. This simulation is novel in that it explores the impact of collections on the indoor environment. The effect on the indoor relative humidity (RH) of the way in which the storage volume is progressively filled and of the moisture content of the collection are evaluated.

Systems and Methods of Document Delivery in the Foreign Libraries

In the modern digital society, innovative technologies are coming to the fore in the activities of libraries; with their help the libraries can focus on the value of their role in culture and education, meet information needs in the context of digital transformation. At the same time, libraries try to facilitate the work of their employees as much as possible and simplify the efforts of readers in obtaining the necessary literature. This can be achieved by automation of the process of delivery and return of library materials ordered by users within the premises of the library. As a rule, for such purposes there is used telelift — an automated monorail handling system designed for the delivery of goods up to 50 kg (documents, books, magazines, etc.) inside buildings and premises. Telelift is installed in many large libraries, including national libraries in many countries. In addition to telelifts, national libraries use some other document delivery systems. So, the national library of the Netherlands, which is located in one building, has three reading rooms and several storages in the same building, uses the automated storage and retrieval systems of Swisslog company. The article is based on studying the materials of websites of the national libraries, the appeals to the library virtual reference services Ask a Librarian, correspondence with employees of the departments of storage and library and information services of national libraries, as well as additional questionnaire surveys of libraries on the issues related to the storage of library materials. The questionnaire covered the following topics: conducting complete or partial audit, types of audit, use of RFID tags, delivery of material to reading rooms, including, from the remote repositories, the preferred format for issuing a document to the user if this document has a copy (microfilm, microfiche, electronic copy, etc.), as well as statistics of binding and restoration work, ordering necessary materials by readers, etc. The article presents the questionnaire survey responses of the national libraries of Switzerland, Korea, the Royal Library of Netherlands, the British Library, as well as the the Library and Archives of Canada.

Beastly Condemnation: The Representation of Oldenbarnevelt’s Twenty-Four Judges as Animals

The Rijksmuseum’s History Department holds a remarkable early eighteenthcentury album titled Regtspleging van Oldenbarnevelt (The Trial of Oldenbarnevelt). The album contains a collection of thirty-eight watercolour drawings on parchment with written explanations on paper and deals with the infamous trial of the Land’s Advocate. At its heart are cartoons of the twenty-four judges who signed Oldenbarnevelt’s death warrant, with the judges depicted as animals. The Rijksmuseum album is similar to albums in the National Library of the Netherlands and Rotterdam City Archives. In this article we show that Oldenbarnevelt’s judges continued to be subjects of general interest for more than a century. We locate the satirical portrayal of the judges as animals in the broader tradition of animal allegories used as a vehicle for political criticism, and explore the function of the album. It probably served as a key to a painting – not Cornelis Saftleven’s famous work Satire op de berechting van Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (Satire of the Trial of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt) in the Rijksmuseum, but a later composition by an anonymous artist now in the Six Collection. Finally, we come to the conclusion that the album is part of a game of concealment and revelation that is typical of the Remonstrants’ memorial culture. 

Variarum Scripturarum Exempla, Willem Silvius’ Writing-Book Discovered

Abstract This article attributes a manuscript in the collection of the KB, the National Library of the Netherlands, to Willem Silvius (c. 1520–1580), an Antwerp printer and a former writing master. The manuscript carries the title Variarum Scripturarum Exempla and contains 44 writing samples in eight different languages. It probably served as Silvius’ personal writing-book, which he used to attract customers when he was working as a writing master in Louvain. In 1562 he intended to publish the manuscript as the first printed exemplar-book in the Low Countries which contained writing models for different languages and settings. Although this publication never materialised, Silvius’ writing-book is a testimonial for the life and the achievements of one of most significant printers of sixteenth century Antwerp.

Experimenting with 360° and virtual reality representations as new access strategies to vulnerable physical collections: Two case studies at the KB, National Library of the Netherlands

In the late 1990s, the explosion of electronic resources resulted in large-scale digitisation projects amid the need for the preservation of digital information. The KB, National Library of the Netherlands, has been actively involved in these activities. Now, it is proposing better ways to both preserve physical library materials and improve their accessibility for educational purposes. This article describes two ongoing projects that involve preservation and public engagement. One, in its early stages, is to test the applicability of 360° imaging to support virtual access to the special collections’ storage. The second is the virtual reality production, for educational purposes, of children’s pop-up books. Both projects could inspire other libraries to introduce three-dimensional or virtual reality technologies and their applications to new audiences. This article describes each project, shows the methods used, and discusses the expected outcomes.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Digital Preservation

We have learned from the debate on diversity and inclusion that archiving is not neutral or unbiased even though it is presented in this way. Seen from the perspective of cultural humility, we need to keep learning and challenge power imbalances from both the individual and the organizational level. This article discusses what this means for digital preservation concepts.

The KB and Corona

This contribution describes the initial response of the KB, the National Library of the Netherlands, to the Corona / COVID-pandemic.

The Land of Letter-Lovers: The Year in the Netherlands

The Land of Letter-LoversThe Year in the Netherlands Monica Soeting (bio) In comparison with the US and the UK, the term "life writing" came to the Netherlands rather late. It wasn't until the first years of the twenty-first century that it was introduced to Dutch readers in publications like Marijke Huisman's 2008 book Publieke levens: Autobiografieën op de Nederlandse boekenmarkt 1850–1918 and in Dutch journals like Biografie Bulletin and De Gids. Yet the term is still being contested by Dutch biography scholars Hans Renders and Binne de Haan of the University of Groningen. Renders sees "life writers" as idealistic therapists who want to offer "retrospective justice" by sustaining "overwhelming attention for the deprived in history" ("Biography in Academia" 172) like "women, coloured people, homosexuals, victims of the Holocaust, and so on" (170), in order to "show that the authors of these autobiographical documents were victimised by their social context" (169). "Life writing," De Haan writes, thus can only be described as "subjective identity politics" (194), in which "Life Writers" use documents and other texts as "vehicles for emancipation" (186). However, most Dutch scholars find no problem in using "life writing" as an umbrella term, i.e., in the sense Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson have defined it in their renowned book Reading Autobiography: "a general term for writing that takes a life, one's own or another's, as its subject" (4). Outside the academy, the term "life writing" is still largely unknown to the general reading public in the Netherlands. Moreover, the catalogue of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the National Library of the Netherlands, which holds copies of all books published in the Netherlands, does not use "life writing" as an index term; searching the KB website for "life writing" only turns up book titles containing the words "life" and/or "writing." This doesn't help to popularize "life writing" as an umbrella term. Therefore, to assess the lifewriting publications that hit the Dutch book market in 2019, one must search the KB catalogue for all the different genres that one would consider part of life writing, such as biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, and collections of letters. [End Page 137] To start with "biography" as a search word, the KB catalogue shows no more than ten books published by Dutch and Flemish authors in the Netherlands in 2019, which does not reflect the actual number. The KB catalogue does not categorize as "biography" one of the most interesting and enjoyable Dutch biographies published last year: Verhalen van de drakendochter by Willem Gerritsen, a book about the life and work of internationally renowned Dutch literary scholar and the second Dutch professor of Celtic Studies, Maartje Draak (1907–1995), of whom Gerritsen was a student. Instead, the book is categorized as "levensbeschrijving" (literally, "life description"), an outdated term, which is also used for several biographies of male politicians, like Chris Hietland's dissertation about Dutch socialist politician André van der Louw, Mathijs van de Waardt's biography of nineteenth-century liberal politician Dirk Donker Curtius, and the biographies of famous prime ministers, Joop den Uyl and Wim Kok, by Dik Verkuil and Marnix Krop, respectively. Also listed as "levensbeschrijving" are the biographies of two male scientists: a life history of R. P. Cleveringa by sociologist Kees Schuyt, and a biography of Franz Joseph Gall by Theo Mulder. In the "stories of the dragon's daughter" ("draak" is Dutch for "dragon"), Draak's self-fashioning, self-presentation, and representation as one of the very few Dutch female professors in the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century take center stage. In this regard, the biography complies with the elements of what Dutch historian Mineke Bosch calls the "new biography" in her article "Persona en de performance van identiteit," published in the unfortunately no longer existing biography journal Tijdschrift voor biografie in 2012. Bosch writes, "In de nieuwe biografie wordt afscheid […] genomen van het zoeken naar de crux van een leven in termen van (jeugd)trauma's en geheimen onder invloed van het twintigste-eeuwse psychoanalytische complex" [The new biography takes leave of searching for the crux of a life in terms of (youth) traumata and...

Web archaeology in The Netherlands: the selection and harvest of the Dutch web incunables of provider Euronet (1994–2000)

This article describes the method and first results of the ongoing pilot research project on internet archaeology and the quest for web incunables of Koninklijke Bibliotheek - National Library of the Netherlands (KB). It is about web archiving a selection of web incunables published on the Dutch web before 2000 and has a special focus on home pages or user websites from internet provider Euronet* Internet from the period between 1994 and 2000. It explains how internet archaeology can be an innovative way to investigate the new digital cultures through insights from the past. Although many Dutch websites dating from before 2000 are still present on the web and some fine examples of web incunables could be saved, due to technical, legal and other issues it is still hard to archive them. The web collection which is a result of our research cannot therefore be considered as a representative selection of born digital heritage from service provider Euronet, but as the outcome of a learning process.

The National Library of the Netherlands

The National Library of the Netherlands

National Library of the Netherlands on Transformation

Abstract After a short introduction to the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the article deals with the question, why The National Library of The Netherlands (KB) needed to transform. Major challenges are discussed: e.g. new roles for KB in the public library domain and the more general transformation towards a digital business. Next, the article describes strategy: how to transform, following both internal and external drivers? At the end a short overview of current status and results are given.

Artists & Others: The imaginative French Book in the 21st century. Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands, written by Paul van Capelleveen

Artists & Others: The imaginative French Book in the 21st century. Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands, written by Paul van Capelleveen

How can we improve our web collection? An evaluation of webarchiving at the KB National Library of the Netherlands (2007–2017)

In 2007, the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, the Dutch National Library (KB-NL), started the project ‘webarchiving’ based on a selection of Dutch websites. The initial selection of 1000 websites has currently grown into over 12,000 selected websites, crawled at different intervals. Although due to legal restrictions the current use is limited to the KB-NL reading room, it is important that the KB-NL includes the requirements of the (future) users in its approach to creating a web collection. With respect to the long-term preservation of the collection, we also need to incorporate the requirements for long-term archiving in our approach, as described in the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Model ISO 14721: 2012. This article describes the results of a research project on webarchiving and the web collection of archived sites in the KB-NL, investigating the following questions. What is webarchiving in the Netherlands? What are the selection criteria of KB-NL and how are these related to what can be found on the Dutch web by the contemporary user? What is the influence of the choice of tools we use to harvest the final archived website? Do we know enough of the value of the web collection and the potential usage of it by researchers and how can we improve this value? This article will describe the outcomes of the research, the conclusions and advice that can be drawn from it and it is hoped will inspire broader discussions about the essence of creating web collections for long-term preservation as part of cultural heritage.

Recent Books

Artists and Others. The Imaginative French Book in the zist Century: Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands. By Paul van Capelleveen. Nijmegen: Vantilt Publishers. 2016. 216 pp. €29.50. isbn 978 9 46004 268 3. The Dutch engineer Louis Koopman's collection of livres d'artiste and special editions of French literature is one of the major collections of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. By the time of Koopman's death in 1968 it comprised some 6000 books, and a fund to enable its continued development has allowed it to grow to 10,000 today. This book celebrates some of the more recent additions to the collection, in the various forms of artist's book to have emerged from France since 2000. Profusely illustrated throughout, the book is divided into four sections by nature of collaboration: close collaboration between printers and artists, artists who print their own books, publishers who create books with authors and artists, and artists who collaborate with many others to produce books. The conceptual bases for these creations are highly varied, and this guide includes some reflections on the theoretical background to the work.

Paul van Capelleveen, Artists & Others : The imaginative French book in the 21st century. Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands. Nijmegen, Vantilt Publishers, 2016, 215 p., ill., bibliogr., index.

Paul van Capelleveen, Artists & Others : The imaginative French book in the 21st century. Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands. Nijmegen, Vantilt Publishers, 2016, 215 p., ill., bibliogr., index.

The Grapevine: Measuring the Influence of Dutch Newspapers on Delpher

A measure of which newspapers are the most influential is an important foundation for any large-scale study of newspapers. A reliable measure of significance would allow studies to more strongly weigh articles in more influential papers. In this article, we use digital methods to create a partial citation index of a range of Dutch newspapers with a national circulation published in the period from 1920 to 1939. We find that using the digital archive of the National Library of the Netherlands (available through Delpher) enables us to find citations, but the problems of digitization make it impossible to create any index approaching comprehensiveness. Because source criticism – a crucial part of studying history – is made more difficult by digitization, it merits special notice in the digital age.

CEVAP Journal: the first Brazilian electronic scientific publication turns 20 years old

The year 2015 marks 350 years since the appearance of the world’s first scientific publication and 20 years since the publication of the Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins including Tropical Diseases (JVATiTD – www.jvat.org) [1–3]. It was the first Brazilian electronic scientific publication – an official journal of the Center for the Study of Venoms and Venomous Animals (CEVAP) of Sao Paulo State University (UNESP) [4]. The printing-press revolution, one of the most important breakthroughs for humanity, began about 1465 when Johannes Gutenberg invented a moveable mechanical type for printing. In 1665, the first scientific journals appeared in France and England, called respectively the Journal des Scavans and Philosophical Transactions. Since then, the structure of a scientific work has respected the basic paradigms “introduction, methods, results and discussion” – one of humanity’s oldest formats. In 1900, 9,000 scientific articles were published per year; by 2000, this number had grown to 900,000. In 2010, PubMed Central, which does not index the majority of the world’s journals, received 1,100,000 papers for indexing, i.e., approximately 3,000 per day [5]. These data demonstrate the exponential growth of the world scientific knowledge. The great challenge was: how could this immense amount of knowledge be printed and delivered by mail? In August of 1991, Paul Ginsparg, a physicist at Cornell University (USA), founded the Los Alamos e-print archives (http://arxiv.org/), which was considered the first electronic scientific publication [6]. Its mission was to distribute papers automatically to cover the areas of physics, mathematics, computer science, quantitative biology and statistics. It was an electronic system of automatic distribution with definitive submission or the possibility of a correction by the author. It was also discussed in the 1990s whether an electronic publication should be considered a scientific journal or not. According to the Vancouver Group, any electronic publication made available on the Internet constitutes a publication [7]. In 1995, there were about 100 electronic journals in the world, and the commercial Internet was starting in Brazil. In this context, the first Brazilian electronic scientific journal was launched in Botucatu, covering the area of Toxinology. This new journal started one hundred years after Vital Brazil lived in Botucatu. It is a homage we paid to this brilliant Brazilian scientist [4]. The Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins (JVAT) circulated until 2002. Between 1995 and 1999, it was distributed on floppy disks, between 2000 and 2002 on CD-ROM, and only from 2003 on by the Internet, initially via the website http://www.jvat.org.br. In the same year, the publication was broadened to include tropical diseases, and was then called the Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins including Tropical Diseases (JVATiTD) [8]. In 2006, the journal was selected to be included in the Science Citation Index Expanded (ISI – Web of Science™ – Thomson Reuters) and in 2007, received its first impact factor, 0.43. Since between 2007 and 2012 the impact factor remained steady between 0.3 and 0.5, the Editorial Board decided to migrate to a renowned international publisher that would maintain the open access policy and contribute to improving the quality of the publication. It was decided at the time by BioMed Central, Springer. After initiating the partnership, the following goals were established: to index immediately in PubMed Central; to maintain the policy that APCs (article-processing charges) would be free to UNESP researchers; to restructure the editorial board by inviting new researchers, preferentially foreigners; and to increase the impact factor to 2.0 within five years. In January of 2013 there was a migration to BioMed Central and indexing in the following databases: PubMed, PubMed Central, PubMed Central Canada, UK PubMed Central, Depot (National Library of the Netherlands), SpringerLink, Springer Images/Author Mapper, CrossRef, Elsevier/ELSAMS, Quertle, Scirus, EPO (European Patent Office), OhioLINK, SIMID, CISTI (Canada Institute for STI), Proquest, GALE and WebCite/Webcitation. Five associate editors were invited and the editorial board than comprised 15 Brazilian members and 13 foreigners (three from France and the others were from Cuba, Egypt, China, Venezuela, Argentina, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, Mexico, Turkey and Poland). In 2015, the impact factor was 0.8, demonstrating the growth of the publication. A study conducted by Eysenbach [9] showed that the articles published in open access were cited twice as often the paid ones four to ten months after publication. An electronic open-access journal not only provides higher velocity and visibility, but consequently its articles are cited more frequently, thereby improving its impact factor. Barraviera [10] lists the main reasons for publishing in open-access electronic journals: they support all types of images with no size limit; they support different media (audio and video); continuous publication increases the availability on the Internet; indexing in different search engines; accessibility and support to different platforms (computers, tablets, smartphones among others); greater visibility – and therefore a bigger chance of citation and finally an increased impact factor (Additional file 1).

What makes innovation work? Innovation practice in the National Library of the Netherlands

The National Library of the Netherlands, (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, hereafter KB), has been innovating its services and organization for the past 20 years and expects to continue to do so in the future. The central question in this article is: what makes innovation work in the organization of the KB? We will focus on two use cases: the development of the recently opened Delpher portal, giving access to 30 million pages of digitized Dutch heritage, and the current development of the KB ResearchLab that gives internal and external researchers a platform for experiments. A review of innovation theory and practice (Balk 2013) provides us with a checklist of factors that determine the innovation capacity of a library, grouped in four themes: Leadership and culture, Knowledge and organizational learning, Collaboration capacity and Organizational design. By applying this innovation checklist to the use cases discussed, we hope to contribute to the body of best practice in innovation in national libraries. Finally, we will look ahead at the development of the National Digital Library of the Netherlands, integrating services for the public library community into the KB in the near future and share some potential scenarios for the future of the library landscape in the Netherlands with the audience.

Web Archive Search as Research: Methodological and Theoretical Implications

The field of web archiving is at a turning point. In the early years of web archiving, the single URL has been the dominant unit for preservation and access. Access tools such as the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine reflect this notion as they allowed consultation, or browsing, of one URL at a time. In recent years, however, the single URL approach to accessing web archives is being gradually replaced by search interfaces. This paper addresses the theoretical and methodological implications of the transition to search on web archive research. It introduces ‘search as research’ methods, practices already applied in studies of the live web, which can be repurposed and implemented for critically studying archived web data. Such methods open up a variety of analytical practices that were so far precluded by the single URL entry point to the web archive, such as the re-assemblage of existing collections around a theme or an event, the study of archival artefacts and scaling the unit of analysis from the single URL to the full archive, by generating aggregate views and summaries. The paper introduces examples to ‘search as research’ scenarios, which have been developed by the WebART project at the University of Amsterdam and the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, in collaboration with the National Library of the Netherlands. The paper concludes with a discussion of current and potential limitations of ‘search as research’ methods for studying web archives, and the ways with which they can be overcome in the near future.