In the past few weeks, 75,000 children's books have been moved to the KB in The Hague. The KB already possessed an extensive and impressive collection of children's books numbering more than 20,000 items. Thanks to this recent addition the KB's collection of children's books has, in one fell swoop, become the largest collection in the Netherlands.
The KB obtained the collection as a longterm loan from the Netherlands Literature Museum, and it originally stemmed from the service Book and Youth of the Netherlands Association of Public Libraries (NBLC), which has came under the auspices of the museum from 1 November 1997.
Apart from the general, narrative collection of children's books, the Book & Youth collection includes several specific subsets. In this regard one should consider the ABC books, special didactic books for young people and comics. Furthermore, magazines, audiovisual material and several thousand foreign childrens books form part of the collection. The collection frequently includes several prints of one book, mostly differing in form or content. This explains, for example, why there are in total forty-nine different versions of various Pietje Bell books present in the collection.
The books have been kept in their original state as far as possible. Frequently, the dust-covers are still attached to the books and they are not covered with bar-codes or stickers. The collection is in the care of Dr Anne de Vries, who has been partially posted to the KB for this purpose.
Dr Anne de Vries (*1944) has been employed for many years as Head of the Book & Youth service of the NBLC. He obtained his doctorate in 1989 with a dissertation entitled 'What constitutes a good children's book? - a study of theoretical remarks about children's literature and the practice of book reviewing in the Netherlands from 1880-1980'. A commercial issue of this book was also brought onto the market by the publishing company Querido. Moreover, De Vries has published a substantial number of reviews on (the history of) children's and young people's literature.
In the coming years, throughout the processing period, the children's books will, in principle, only be available for exhibitions. After this it will be possible for anyone interested to view them.
See also the information about the collection of children's books of the KB: Kinderboeken.
24 November 1997