One of the oldest and most striking calendars in the KB collection is a fourteenth-century perpetual calendar. A unique feature of this calendar is that it consists of two strips of sheep parchment, fastened together, totalling 130 cm in length. This is to be rolled up so that the user can carry it in his pocket. Only in the eighteenth century was a suitable binding fashioned for the work.

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The invention of the printing press during the first half of the fifteenth century is generally regarded as one of the most profound events in human history because of its enormous social consequences. The first printed books, which are called incunabula, were published in editions of a few hundred copies and reached a larger audience than manuscripts did.

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One of the most important astronomers from the second half of the fifteenth century was Johann Müller, born on 6 June 1436 in Königsberg, Bavaria. Müller was to acquire great fame under the name Regiomontanus, a latinization of his birthplace.

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The most interesting part of this little almanac is the first month of the calendar. What do we see? January has only 21 days! This is not a printer's error. Ten days have been intentionally eliminated. On 1 January the people of Holland went to bed and when they woke up the next day it was 12 January. The reason for this was a much discussed calendar reform.

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In addition to protests against the papal calendar reform, there were other anti-Catholic sentiments being expressed in the Netherlands regarding almanacs. Because almanacs had their roots in mediaeval calendars, they contained a number of Catholic elements such as saints' days. Even the suggestions to Protestant clergymen to read a particular Bible text on a particular day during church services were Catholic in origin. It is not surprising that beginning in the sixteenth century, the century of the Reformation, Protestants made various attempts to suppress the almanac's papist character.

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The KB collection includes two Dutch shepherds' calendars from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, re-prints of a French edition from 1510 and an English impression from 1506. Interest in this special almanac has always been considerable, even among the common people.

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Publishers have always tried to attract buyers by placing the name of a famous person on a book's title page. Sometimes this person was responsible for writing the preface, but such is not the case with this almanac, which proudly mentions the name of the Danish astronomer and mathematician Tycho Brahe (1546-1601).

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Towards the end of the sixteenth century, Amsterdam made its acquaintance with Portuguese and Spanish Jews. Together they were referred to as the Sephardim, taken from the Hebrew word for Spain, 'Sefarad'. Some of them came directly from the Iberian peninsula, from which they had fled because of the Inquisition. Some were wealthy Portuguese merchants from places such as Antwerp who had come to Amsterdam at the request of the States General to promote trade and prosperity.

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Appointments, purchases, bookkeeping, recipes, drawings, penmanship exercises - all of these can be found in almanacs. Just as we fill our appointment diaries with our own scribblings, so our ancestors recorded their daily concerns in almanacs. And for modern researchers this is one of their most engaging aspects. Almanacs allow us to look, quite literally, into the kitchen of their previous owners. More than any other book, the almanac was meant to write in. Notation almanacs, for example, contain a calendar with extra white space for notes.

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The number of almanacs made in the past far outnumbered those that are still available. Most bibliophiles and libraries preferred to collect the handsome editions for which Dutch publishers have become famous, or scientific and religious texts that were of interest to the rank and file. Almanacs were regarded as tools that could be thrown away after the passage of time.

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Andreas van Luchtenburg must have been a versatile and cultivated man. Besides being the city supervisor of Tholen, he taught the skill of plotting points and making measurements in the sky, the earth and the sea, and he was also a mathematician, an almanac calculator and a teacher of Italian and bookkeeping. But above all he was a man with a mind of his own who never kept his dissenting opinions to himself but published them in book form at his own expense.

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It was not until the end of the eighteenth century, when the ideas of the Enlightenment had become widely accepted, that almanac astrological predictions were forced to step aside and make way for other features. In 1787 the Amsterdam publisher Theodorus Crajenschot began to cut out weather predictions and 'similar absurdities' in his Nuttige en aangename staatsalmanach [Useful and Pleasant State Almanac], and to replace them with 'something substantial' - 'a brief Sketch about The Power of Love'.

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The design of most almanacs is what you might call plain: small books that could be quickly tossed off in the print shop and required very little paper. The woodcuts they contained were not exactly executed with an eye for details, but this kept the price down so that everyone could afford to buy an almanac - or to receive one. In the Almanak voor christelijke huisgezinnen [Almanac for Christian Families] for 1837 the publisher writes, 'We are offering the almanac at a low price in order to enable the wealthier among us to distribute them to the poor.'

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'De almanak en de courant brengen de leugens in het land' [The almanac and the newspaper fill the country with lies]. Almanacs did not enjoy the most pristine reputation. Despite their popularity within large segments of the population, their predictions, their Catholic elements and their shabby appearance made for at least as much criticism as praise. Clergymen, doctors, reviewers and other made almanacs a frequent target.

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If a writer suspected that his book might not escape the censors, he could decide to have it printed in another country or he could publish it under a pseudonym. Many books with new political or theological ideas, erotic subjects or satirical texts were put on the market under wonderful fantasy names.

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At first glance, Ernst en boert voor de XIXe eeuw, of almanach van beschaafde kundigheden [Gravity and Jest for the 19th Century, or Almanac of Cultivated Knowledge] appears to be no more than an ordinary literary almanac, with a rather plain calendar section and a sizeable miscellany. Nicely finished illustrations, mind you, and a bit thicker than other almanacs. Yet Ernst en boert is exceptional. It is the only Dutch almanac of which all the volumes were reprinted in their entirety.

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If you were a member of one of the royal houses of Europe, you would buy the Almanac de Gotha to make sure the information about your family had been correctly maintained. Being recorded in this almanac meant you existed for the outside world and belonged to a company of the elect. You could also investigate the origins of a potential marriage partner. If it appeared that your intended was from a lower class, then a morganatic (left-handed) marriage was in the offing. If the woman was of low degree, she and her children would be barred from certain privileges and particularly from her husband's inheritance.

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People are fascinated by extremes. What is the world's highest skyscraper? Where is the world's smallest house? What is the world's largest airplane? Who is the oldest human being on earth? Bibliophiles are interested in different facts. What is the most beautifully printed book? When was the first gilt-edged book produced? How many Gutenberg Bibles are there in the Netherlands? Very few collectors are interested in mammoth-sized books. Miniature books, on the other hands, are popular not only among people living in cramped quarters, or nomads wanting to carry every book they own in their jacket pocket. They're also greatly sought after by the well-housed, such as America's President Roosevelt.

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One striking segment of the population that made itself known by means of almanacs were the Freemasons. Dutch Freemasonry dates back to the early eighteenth century and for a long time was shrouded in mystery, partly due to the oath of secrecy required of each prospective member before being admitted to the group. Despite the guidelines concerning morality and friendship, outsiders suspected the Freemasons of libertine behaviour and sodomy. Each year beginning in 1751, the Freemasons of the Netherlands provided information about their order by means of various almanacs.

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Surinam was still a Spanish possession 400 years ago. The first Dutch merchants settled there in 1613, attracted by fantastic stories of gold and diamonds in abundance. The English were quick to follow and created an agricultural colony there. After the Second English War (1665-1667), Surinam became a Dutch possession until the English re-conquered it in 1799. In 1814, Surinam became a Dutch colony once again and would remain so until 1975.

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The emergence of the woman as an able-bodied writer and reader took place in the Netherlands in the eighteenth century. As that century progressed, more and more publications appeared that were especially aimed at women - works such as collections of poetry and almanacs. More and more women made their name as novelists, poets, translators, members of learned societies or journalists. Consequently, the intellectual and social development of the woman became a favourite topic for discussion. Many almanacs contained text (written mostly by men) that explained how women should perform their household tasks, how they might increase their domestic well-being, or how they ought to dress. But there were also almanacs written by women themselves, almanacs in which life was shown from their perspective and in which equal rights were even being demanded.

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In the course of the eighteenth century, almanac publishers also discovered that young people, like women, constituted a distinct group of readers. Starting in 1760, almanacs began to be published that, according to their titles, were explicitly aimed at youth. The oldest children's almanac in the KB is the Almanach voor kinderen [Almanac for Children] of 1781. This work capitalized on the popularity of the children's poems of Hieronymus van Alphen of 1778 - and with success, as the almost twenty successive volumes testify. The almanac's simple poems told children how to behave and urged them to love their families, God and country.

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As early as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, almanacs were being brightened up with verses, burlesques and other amusing creations. These 'extras' were located in the calendar part of the almanac or in separate booklets bound in the back. They were mostly jokes and gags that many people today would regard as vulgar, politically incorrect or discriminatory. One frequently printed joke features the almanac itself. A woman complains to her reading husband, 'If only I were a book, then at least you'd pay some attention to me.' To which he answers, 'If only you were an almanac, then I'd have a new one every year.'

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The almanac's calendar section lent itself to the practice of recording engagements and daily annotations. Today, the appointment diary has taken over this role. If there is one environment that is inextricably bound up with the appointment diary (at least in the Netherlands), it's the classroom. Oddly enough, it wasn't until the beginning of the nineteenth century that such a connection came to exist between education and almanacs. But this connection quickly proved so durable, especially in the universities, that it has continued up to the present day.

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Along with the tax almanac and the student almanac, the Enkhuizen almanac is the most imaginative Dutch almanac of the early 21st century. It is the only almanac still to resemble the earliest printed almanacs in size, structure and contents. Each year it is published in a huge edition, partly in special versions. The makers of the Enkhuizen almanac also know how to exploit the media. They have their own website (www.enkhuizer-almanak.nl)and in 1997 a CD-I version was produced. Although the almanac is not as old as it looks, it is an unparalleled cultural phenomenon that seems to have held its own in this digital age.

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