Roger Jøsevold (National Library of Norway, Oslo):
A National Library for the 21st Century – Content and services in The Digital Library

In 2004 the Norwegian National Library (NLN) adopted a digital strategy saying that The National Library shall be the core of a Norwegian digital library. Within the framework of this strategy NLN has launched a digital library service with content from a range of media.

Some examples:

• An agreement between the Norwegian Collecting society Kopinor and NLN agreed upon in 2012 gives everyone with a Norwegian IP-address access to all books published in Norway up through the year 2000. The agreement is based on the legal platform of extended collective licensing.
• Through agreements with newspaper-publishers NLN has digitized their historical collections and secured access to these in all Norwegian Libraries.
• Since 2001 NLN has had a close partnership with the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. In a joint operation the historical radio archive of the broadcaster has been digitized. Part of this archive is now being disseminated through NLN’s digital library services.

The effect of having made this historical content accessible on nb.no can be seen through the user statistics. During the last four years there has been an annual growth of users by 40-50 %. In March this year there was an all-time high with a total of more than 400 000 visitors to nb.no. The number must be compared with the fact that Norway is a small country with only five million inhabitants.

This presentation was held during the Archivia 14 conference.