For the eponymous Sven Lidman, the Lutheran priest, see Sven Lidman (clergyman)

Sven Lidman (clergyman)

Sven Fredrik Lidman, Sven Fredrik Lidman, Sven Fredrik Lidman, (December 11, 1786 in Norrköping – March 9, 1845 in Linköping, was a Swedish clergyman.Lidman received a PhD from Uppsala University in 1806 and became an ordained clergyman in the Evangelical-Lutheran state church of Sweden in...

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Sven Lidman (3 December 1921 - 28 February 2011), was a Swedish lexicographer living in Stockholm

Stockholm

Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

, son of the writer Sven Lidman

Sven Lidman (writer)

Carl Hindrik Sven Rudolphsson Lidman —military officer, poet, writer, and preacher, grandson of the priest Sven Lidman—was born in Karlskrona, became a sublieutenant in the Swedish royal army reserve in 1903, and studied law at Uppsala University...

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He was the main editor or managing director of several Swedish 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....

s, including the 5th edition of Kunskapens bok (9 volumes 1954-1955), Focus

Focus (encyclopedia)

Focus is an encyclopedia first published in Swedish in 5 volumes 1958–1960, later extended with additional volumes, republished in several editions, and translated to Danish, Norwegian, French, Portuguese, and Spanish...

(5 volumes 1958-1960), Lilla Focus (1 volume 1961), Combi Visuell (5 volumes 1968-1970), Combi lexikon (2 volumes 1973), Familjens universallexikon (2 volumes 1975), Bonniers familjelexikon (20 volumes 1983-1986), and Bonniers stora lexikon (15 volumes 1985-1990). His ideas to use illustrations not to but with the text took European lexicography to new heights with Focus and Combi Visuell. The later is a rare landmark in visualization from the same booming years that saw the first moon landing.

In 1983, Sven Lidman took the initiative to the founding of Bild och Ord Akademin, the Swedish Academy of Verbovisual Communication, where he holds the honorary title of Preses Magnificus. Since its beginning in 1983 the Academy awards an annual Lidman Prize for good information in words and images.

His autobiography Uppslagsboken och jag (1988) covering the 1950s through 1970s was published after it was decided (in 1985) that the Swedish state order for 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...

(which see) went to a competing publisher. An updated autobiography was published in 2006, The two works are overlapping, but the latter contains more of personal reflexions and uses more of the illustration techniques that the author preaches, in addition to covering the 1990s. A continued chapter can be downloaded in PDF from the publisher's website (www.lindco.se).

External links

• Bild och Ord Akademin
• Svenska Uppslagsverk, Christofer Psilander's website of Swedish encyclopedias