National Library of Norway

By Petter Rønningsen, National Library of Norway

The National Library is one of the most important sources of knowledge about Norway, its citizens and Norwegian conditions. It is responsible for collecting, preserving and making available collections of all types of media.

Pursuant to the Legal Deposit Act, all material published in Norway – regardless of media format – must be deposited with the National Library. These testaments to Norwegian culture and social life are thereby preserved for posterity, and represent an important source for documentation and research. Activities are developed in collaboration with various social institutions in the fields of libraries, media, training, research, archives, museums and art. New services are also created for the public.The National Library represents an important resource in a number of areas, such as the infrastructure for Norwegian research – including its role as a research library. It also serves as an instrument of cultural policy, of long-term conservation of Norwegian cultural heritage, and for celebrating important anniversaries of authors. In addition, the library has gained an extended responsibility in linguistic policy through the job of establishing, developing and operating a Norwegian language bank. It has also been made responsible for developing Norway’s library sector.
Digitising, long-term conserving of digital records and developing digital library services represent a key part of the National Library’s activities.
It has begun the extensive job of digitising its complete collection, a project expected to take 20-30 years. Material is made available in accordance with the Copyright Act or agreements with copyright holders.
With almost 450 employees, the National Library is headed by the national librarian. Its organisation is split between Oslo and Mo i Rana in northern Norway.

Role in the Statfjord industrial heritage project

The National Library is equipped to make the part of its collection relevant to Statfjord available through the industrial heritage project. That derives both from its role as the depository for all material published in the public arena, and from its current project to digitise its whole collection. The library has been responsible for digitising the books, journals, radio programmes and pamphlets which can be found on this website.
It has also received digital files and metadata for films from Norgesfilm and for photographs and objects from the Digital Museum , which have been made available through the search page. In addition, the library has implemented and operates the entire web solution for the Statfjord industrial heritage, including the search function.
The latter makes it possible to search both in metadata (name, title, author and so forth) and in the actual content of a book, for example, or other printed works. A relevant digital object can be viewed or listened to.
Other digital material can also be found in the National Library’s digital collection (in Norwegian only) at www.nb.no .