Nordisk familjebok is a Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

 encyclopedia

Encyclopedia

An encyclopedia is a type of reference work, a compendium holding a summary of information from either all branches of knowledge or a particular branch of knowledge....

, published between 1876 and 1957.

History

The first edition was published in 20 volumes between 1876 and 1899. The first edition is known as the "Iðunn edition" because of the picture of Iðunn

Iðunn

In Norse mythology, Iðunn is a goddess associated with apples and youth. Iðunn is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson...

 on the cover. The second edition was published between 1904 and 1926 in 38 volumes, and is thereby the most comprehensive encyclopedia published in the Swedish language. It is popularly known as Uggleupplagan ("The Owl

Owl

Owls are a group of birds that belong to the order Strigiformes, constituting 200 bird of prey species. Most are solitary and nocturnal, with some exceptions . Owls hunt mostly small mammals, insects, and other birds, although a few species specialize in hunting fish...

 Edition"), because it has an owl on the cover. Two more editions were published before 1957. The copyrights have since expired from the two first versions, and they are now in the public domain

Public domain

Works are in the public domain if the intellectual property rights have expired, if the intellectual property rights are forfeited, or if they are not covered by intellectual property rights at all...

.

In the 1990s, persons active at the Linköping University

Linköping University

Linköping University is a state university in Linköping, Sweden. Linköping University was granted full university status in 1975 and is now one of Sweden's larger academic institutions. Education, research and PhD training are the mission of four faculties: Arts and Sciences, Educational...

 started Project Runeberg

Project Runeberg

Project Runeberg is an initiative patterned after Project Gutenberg that publishes freely available electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the Nordic countries...

 with the intention of providing digital copies of old printed Nordic

Nordic countries

The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories, the Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland...

 – just as Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg

Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...

 aims to do with English Literature. In 2001, technology had improved enough to allow a full scale digitalization of the entire encyclopedia using scanning and OCR (optical character recognition

Optical character recognition

Optical character recognition, usually abbreviated to OCR, is the mechanical or electronic translation of scanned images of handwritten, typewritten or printed text into machine-encoded text. It is widely used to convert books and documents into electronic files, to computerize a record-keeping...

) techniques. All 45,000 pages (counting both encyclopedias) have so far been scanned and OCR read, and are publicly available on the Runeberg Webpage. However, there still remains much proof reading to be done.

See also

• Nationalencyklopedin
  Nationalencyklopedin
  Nationalencyklopedin is the most comprehensive contemporary Swedish language encyclopedia, initiated by a favourable loan from the Government of Sweden of 17 million Swedish kronor in 1980, which was repaid by December 1990...
  
   (1989-1996)
• Images from Nordisk familjebok at Wikimedia Commons
  Wikimedia Commons
  Wikimedia Commons is an online repository of free-use images, sound and other media files. It is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation....
  
  

External links

• Nordisk familjebok – both editions (45,000 pages) are available online through Project Runeberg
  Project Runeberg
  Project Runeberg is an initiative patterned after Project Gutenberg that publishes freely available electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the Nordic countries...