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This work presents a selection of the acquisitions made by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek during the tenure of Wim van Drimmelen as Director General. In honour of his retirement, the KB and the Nationaal Archief have organised an exhibition in the Verdieping van Nederland, their common exhibition space, of sixty of the most remarkable acquisitions made over the past few years. Each year, the KB adds another 180,000 paper and electronic publications to its collections. That means that in the seventeen years than Van Drimmelen stood at the helm, from 1991 to 2008, the KB acquired more than 3 million items. These are all described in the KB catalogue and can be requested for viewing at home or in one of the Library's reading rooms. An increasing proportion of the collections can also be viewed digitally at the KB website (www.kb.nl) or The Memory of the Netherlands (http://www.geheugenvannederland.nl/?/en/homepage).
Selection
This book illustrates sixty acquisitions selected from among the three million publications mentioned above. This was not an easy task. Each of the acquisitions has its own story, whether that of the debut of an up-and-coming poetic talent that arrives via the Depot of Dutch Publications, a missing issue of a periodical suddenly brought in by a private individual, a study of Dutch history purchased via an international bookseller, the first print of an old book bought at auction or a Medieval Book of Hours acquired from an antiquarian: each acquisition is a valuable addition to the collection. The KB is proud of its collection, which is entirely composed of such valuable items.
And yet the selection of the works portrayed in this book was not all that difficult. A number of the acquisitions were certain of being included in the selection, either due to their importance for the collection, their unmistakeable cultural-historical value, or their unique history. Naturally, the selection of items had to emphasise the collection's diversity, both in terms of content as well as form. Lastly, the selection also had to mirror the collection policies implemented over the past years.
Building the collection
Until 2005, the KB had four different priorities in its collection policy. The KB originally began as a humanities library, with important academic collections in the fields of history, the arts and letters, theology, philosophy and law. In 1998, a book on the history of this collection was published to commemorate its 200th anniversary. Over the course of time, the Library gradually narrowed the profile for this collection. The rising cost of books and magazine subscriptions combined with stagnant budgets made it necessary for the Library to concentrate its attention in order to emphasise its profile in the changing national and international library infrastructure, as well as to deal with the developments and opportunities created by digitalisation.
In addition to being an academic library, the KB has also been a depot library since 1974. Publishers in the Netherlands all send one copy of every work they publish to the Depot Nederlandse Publicaties (Dutch Publication Depot). They do so voluntarily, in contrast to many other countries where publishers are legally required to send their national library a copy. Yet 97% of all works published in the Netherlands are sent to the KB. The importance of the depot collection was emphasised by a publication and an exhibition commemorating its 25th anniversary in 1999.
Over the course of the Library's history, the collections of manuscripts, old prints, book covers, rare and valuable works and paperhistorical materials have been gathered together as parts of the 'Special Collections'. These are the third category in the KB's historic collection profile.
The fourth category is made up of the electronic publications. This fast-growing stream of acquisitions has required large investments in equipment and manpower, and has resulted in the Electronic Publication Depot, or e-Depot. Large international publishers submit their publications for storage in this depot.
In the Collectieplan 2006-2009. Nederland in de wereld - de wereld in Nederland (Collection Plan 2006-2009. The Netherlands in the World - The World in the Netherlands) which was created in 2005, the Library decided to abandon the four-fold collection policy described above. It now has one single KB collection that is formed according to criteria that complement the general description of 'Dutch history, language and culture'. This single collection has been made accessible to the public as a unit. Behind the scenes, the administrative processes that once differed for each collection are currently being merged and integrated as much as possible.
The choice of these sixty items was based on the development of the collection over a period of seventeen years. The Depot Collection is represented by a newspaper and two periodicals. The e-Depot is also vital to the KB and is represented by one collection which symbolises the rest of the items in the e-Depot. But the majority of the items selected for the work are acquisitions for the Special Collection and the Academic Collection. This is due in part to the form of the depot and the electronic acquisitions; their massive scale and the non-selective nature of the acquisitions. The items featured were acquired in the period between 1991 and 2008 using a reasoned application of available resources, focused fundraising, tactful acceptance of donations and conscious choices for inclusion. In short, they are the result of the efforts of very experienced collectors.
Expertise and a thorough knowledge of the collection are vital competencies for collection managers. The subject specialist must have an intimate knowledge of his or her collection in order to justify the purchase of an item as necessary due to a certain aspect that is missing from the collection. And without the curator's expertise, items purchased solely based on the salesman's advice could easily turn out to be very expensive mistakes. Uncritical acceptance of every donation offered to the KB would quickly lead to a bottleneck in processing new acquisitions, as well as turn the KB collection into a random accumulation of printed or handwritten paper. It is favourable that the KB has such a large collection, but it is even better that the collection is of such a high quality. No one can deny that this quality is the result of the expertise and commitment of the KB staff involved. The quality of the acquisitions made under the Directorate of Wim van Drimmelen is in turn reflected in the selection illustrated in this book.
Acquisitions
The Koninklijke Bibliotheek's mission is to provide researchers and students with access to academic information and to allow everyone to share in the opulence of our cultural heritage. In addition, the KB stimulates the creation of a national infrastructure for academic information and promotes durable accessibility of digital information. The KB is funded by the government in order to perform these tasks well. A portion of these funds are earmarked for expanding the collection, and this budget is then distributed among the sub-collections and specialities, allowing subject specialists or curators to make purchases or, if the price exceeds certain limits, to submit purchase proposals which are sometimes reviewed by the board. These purchases are made at auctions at home and abroad, at book fairs or in response to offers by antiquarian booksellers or private parties. The KB staff carefully reviews auction catalogues, prospectuses and sales lists, and then stores them to document the history of the acquisitions.
The available budgets are often insufficient to make the desired purchases. In such cases, the KB can count on the financial support of the Vereniging van Vrienden van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek (Friends of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek) as well as that of a number of other funds, foundations and sponsors.
The KB is therefore very pleased and thankful for the external financing provided by these financiers while Van Drimmelen served as Director. Not only because the donations made it possible for the KB to purchase some extremely valuable pieces, but also because it is an expression of trust. In the afterword to this work we have included a list of the funds that have contributed to the purchase of one or more pieces acquired by the Library.
The KB also wishes to thank the private individuals who have expressed their appreciation of the library by donating single pieces or entire collections. The government's efforts to make these donations more attractive through fiscal regulations cannot be praised highly enough. The KB's collection has grown spectacularly over the past several years thanks to these donations by private parties. The expertise and commitment that the KB staff display in their work is often named as a reason for making these donations.
Loans are a unique category of donations. Owners of valuable individual pieces or entire collections place their property under the administration of the KB, which makes them accessible to the public, but for reasons of their own prefer to maintain ownership of the works by their family, company or foundation. During this period, the KB has received on loan a priceless Medieval Book of Hours, a large collection of children's books and the poster collection of the Netherlands Tourism Bureau. The KB is very grateful for the trust their owners have placed in the organisation, and is pleased that in so doing these important cultural goods can be made available to the public.
Presentation
The KB builds its collection in order to make it available to the public. The items in the collection can be sources for academic research, but they are also interesting for a broad public interested in culture in general. In order to reach these target groups, the KB lists the items in the collection in the KB catalogue, which can be accessed via Internet or on location in the reading rooms. The KB also has a cultural and an academic programme for presenting the collections. In the academic programme, the KB bundles those activities that are intended to reinforce its ties with the academic world in order to better attune its services to the needs of that target group. The KB also works hard to publicise the diversity within its collections and encourages researchers to use it more intensively. The cultural programme is an expression of the KB's ambition of allowing everyone to experience the richness of our cultural heritage through exhibitions, publications, events and web expositions. The KB exhibits some works in-house in its exhibition space 'De Verdieping van Nederland', as well as providing collection items for a number of exhibitions in the Netherlands and abroad. An increasing number of works are being digitalised in order to be displayed on the KB website.
The media also express a fascination for our cultural heritage. One example was the KB's purchase of the Gruuthuse Manuscript in February 2007. The event became a media circus, and the Manuscript was leading news in a number of national newspapers. Several KB employees discussed the acquisition on radio and television, and Director Wim van Drimmelen even appeared on Jeugdjournaal, a news programme for young viewers, to discuss what is undoubtedly the most important acquisition of his career.
This book
In this book we have presented sixty works in the chronological order of their acquisition. This provides a varied presentation, as well as illustrating the breadth of the collection, which is constantly being enriched by acquisitions of works dating from the Middle Ages up to the present day.
Each acquisition is accompanied by a description. Sometimes the title is used and sometimes an editorial reference. The maker's name and date of production is included in each entry. In order to give an idea of its size, the dimensions of each item are also included. Each object description includes an individual KB catalogue number that can be used to request it. Finally, it is related in each entry how the item came to be acquired. The book also contains a list of works cited, which invites the reader to further research.
The editors wish to give a special expression of gratitude to the photographers Tom Thijs and Pieter Zuyderduyn and to their colleagues in the depot and the Special Collections desk for their efforts in bringing this work to fruition.
Ad Leerintveld
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