Government publications

Collection history: Provenance unknown; in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek since the nineteenth century.
Size: The collection comprises circa 30,000 titles.
Accessibility:The books have been recorded in a printed subject index (Timmer 1936). With the exception of broadsheets the pre-1801 imprints have been or will be included in the STCN. They can only be consulted in the Special Collections Reading Room.
More information: Marieke van Delft 070-3140329

Description of the collection

Laws and statutes issued by Dutch local, provincial and national governments during the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries were published in two forms: as broadsheets (sheets printed on one side) intended to be pinned up on the walls of city halls and other appropriate locations, and in the form of booklets (usually thin quartos) intended for the book shelves and desk drawers of civil servants. Of the hundreds of thousands that must have been published until the early nineteenth century, the KB collection of laws and statutes holds about 30,000, equally divided into both formats. Besides this collection, with an uncertain provenance, but which can be identified by the shelf-mark Plakk. F/Q + number, the KB collection of early printed books comprises numerous other government publications.

Literatuur

E.M.A. Timmer. 'De verzameling plakkaten van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek'. In: Bibliotheekleven 16 (1931), p. 241­250.
E.M.A. Timmer. Alphabetisch register van onderwerpen en namen van personen en plaatsen, voorkomende in de verzameling plakkaten der Koninklijke Bibliotheek. 's­Gravenhage 1937.