[3][4] The KB collects everything that is published in and concerning the Netherlands, from medieval literature to today's publications.
About 7 million publications are stored in the stockrooms, including books, newspapers, magazines and maps.
[6] The initiative to found a national library was proposed by representative Albert Jan Verbeek on 17 August 1798.
In 1815 King William I of the Netherlands confirmed the name of 'Royal Library' (Dutch: Koninklijke Bibliotheek) by royal decree.
[9] The institution became 'Independent Administrative Body' of the state in 1996, although it is financed by the Department of Education, Culture and Science.
The act became valid on 1 January 2015 and from this moment onwards four organizations from the library world continued under the name Koninklijke Bibliotheek.
In the KB's older collections, the humanities were central, with an emphasis on Dutch history, language and culture.
There are also pieces of "grey literature", where the author, publisher, or date may not be apparent but the document has cultural or intellectual significance.
[9] The collection contains almost the entire literature of the Netherlands, from medieval manuscripts to modern scientific publications.
A valuable antiquity that is housed within the library is a bound book by Christopher Plantin (1520–89), a sixteenth-century French printer and publisher.
Knowing its historical significance, the Dutch government purchased the manuscript and brought it to the Royal Library of the Netherlands.
Mixed with that of M. Niemeijer, acquired in 1948, the Biblioteca van der Linde-Niemeijeriana (approximately 40,000 items) forms one of the most important collections worldwide on this topic.
The KB hosts several open access websites, including the "Memory of the Netherlands" (Geheugen van Nederland),[16] Digital Library for Dutch Literature[17] and Delpher, an archive of more than 100 million pages as of 2020.
Sheet music (because the volume of publications per year was too large for processing within the Depository) and Braille books (so as not to unnecessarily withdraw copies from libraries for the blind) were excluded from the start.
The KB has been carrying out the Depositary Task since 1974 and thus manages part of the Dutch cultural heritage.
[21] The museum has a reading room with an extensive collection of newspaper clipping, and under certain conditions, some archival material can be consulted.
[19] On the occasion of the bicentenary of the library in 1998, the exhibition Het worderbaarlijke alfabet (The Miraculous Alphabet) was organized in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam and three books[22][23][24] and a special 80 cent stamp were issued.
[25][26] Thanks to support from the VSB Cultural Fund, which took care of the transport of more than 40,000 school children between 8 and 12 years old from all over the Netherlands, this was a great success.
In 2015, it was discovered that “View of the Kattenberghof in Antwerp with horsemen in the foreground” by Gillis Neyts (1618-1687) had belonged Dr. Arthur Feldmann, a Jewish art collector from Brno (Czech Republic) who was murdered in the Holocaust.
[28] In 2020 it was discovered that 'La buveuse d'absinthe', a watercolour by Félicien Rops from1876 had belonged to the French collector, Armand Dorville.