Incunabula
Postincunabula
Songbooks
Popular prose
Occasional poetry
Pamphlets (Knuttel)
Government publications (edicts)
Book sales catalogues
Aquisition: The collection is still expanded by purchases, donations and loans. The active acquisition is mainly concentrated on Dutch editions of which no other copies are known in the Netherlands. Here, smaller and medium-sized places of print are emphasized. Editions from the Hague form an area of special attention.
Size: The KB owns a collection of 2065 editions printed in the fifteenth century, the incunabula. The collection of post-incunabula, books printed between 1500 and 1540, stands at 3500 editions. The collection is occasionally supplemented with purchases and donations.
The collection of early printed books comprises approximately 150,000 items, varying in size from broadsheets to series such as the Resolutien der Staten van Holland (Statutes of the States of Holland) which extend over twenty metres of shelves. In its entirety the collection takes up nearly seven kilometres.
Description of the collection
Although in the last decades the emphasis of the collecting activities of the KB has shifted towards Dutch cultural heritage, the collection of early printed books traditionally had a general character: a work written by a Frenchman on a French subject, and printed in France, would be included as a matter of course. Particularly French and German printed books are well represented in the KB. Originally subjects such as religion and ecclesiastical history, law and government publications, history and geography (including subdivisions such as travel and topograpy), and literature and other arts (including the subclass emblem books) were emphasized. This does not imply that the KB does not own early printed books in the field of medicine or natural sciences, but, unlike the humanities, in these fields completeness has never been the aim. In this respect, the early printed collections do not differ from the Koninklijke Bibliotheek holdings at large as built up during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Accordingly, the Library's holdings of early printed books can be divided into a number of subject collections. Also, a number of special collections can be indicated, which, besides their subjects, are distinct for their particular manner of acquisition (in past or present), shelving, cataloguing, or a combination of these. The Scheurleer collection (song books), the Waller collection (popular prose), and the collections of Occasional Poetry, Pamphlets (Knuttel), Government Publications and Book Sales Catalogues are collections in point which will be treated in more detail.
Accessibility
With a few exceptions mentioned further on, all early printed books up to 1800 have been entered in the alphabetical and systematic catalogues of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. For the typographical catalogue (the index of printers) these exceptions do not apply. The library of the Museum of the Book/Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, although an independent institution, has also been incorporated in the card catalogues of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and consequently in its typographical catalogue. In the OPAC only the acquisitions of the last twenty years can be found, as well as a number of titles that have been entered retrospectively.
In the alphabetical and systematic catalogues government publications are absent insofar as they are part of the 'Verzameling Plakkaten' (shelf-mark: 'Plakk. ...'), most 18th century Dutch occasional poetry insofar as it has shelf-number 852-853 or shelf-mark 'Gel. Ged. ...', and most 18th century book sales catalogues (shelf-mark 'Verz. Cat. ...').
Unlike the alphabetical and systematic catalogues, the typographical catalogue is practically complete: it also includes all occasional poetry and book sales catalogues, whereas the government publications in the 'Verzameling Plakkaten', insofar as they have an imprint, have been included in a supplement, in the form of photocopies of the title pages.
The typographical catalogue is composed of photocopies of the entries in the alphabetical card catalogue, supplemented by the categories that are absent there, and consists of three main categories: the Netherlands, Other countries, and 'No place'. The Dutch imprints have been arranged entirely by place of publication, then by printer/publisher, and lastly by year of publication. The arrangement of the Other countries is less advanced; these entries are filed by country and place and year of publication only, although an effort has been made to file entries up to 1700 per place by printer/publisher insofar as the KB catalogue offered this information. The category 'No place' is ordered chronologically, with a supplement for undated books.
Dutch books printed beforel 1801 can be found in many ways in the STCN (Short-Title Catalogue, Netherlands), the Dutch national bibliography until 1800 in preparation. 'Dutch printed books' implies: everything printed in the Netherlands regardless of the language, and everything printed outside the Netherlands (except Belgium) in the Dutch language (both with exception of broadsheets and newspapers). The Koninklijke Bibliotheek, and the University Libraries of Amsterdam and Leiden have been described up to 1700; at present, work is in progress in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (18th century), Utrecht University Library (1540-1800) and London, British Library (1622-1700). The STCN can be consulted via the Pica Online Retrieval System (ORS), as well as via the WWW-interface of Pica (OBN).
Early printed books can only be consulted in the Special Collections Reading Room in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek. In the Reading Room, reference works in many fields, and particularly bibliographies and catalogues of early printed books and various monographs are at the disposal of the user. Several subcollection have been indexed separately by means of printed catalogues or databases; these are discussed together with the collections in question.