(; "The National Encyclopedia" in English), abbreviated NE, is a comprehensive contemporary

Swedish-language Swedish ( ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family, spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland. It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the fourth most spoken Germanic language, and the first ...

encyclopedia An encyclopedia is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into article (publishing), articles or entries that are arranged Alp ...

with several hundred thousand articles. It is available both online and via a printed version.

History

The project was initiated in 1980 when a government committee suggested that negotiations be initiated with various

publisher Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

s. A loan from the

Government of Sweden The Government of the Kingdom of Sweden () is the Cabinet (government), national cabinet of Sweden, and the country's Executive (government), executive authority. The Government consists of the Prime Minister of Sweden, Prime Minister and their ...

of 17 million

Swedish krona The krona (; plural: ''kronor''; sign: kr; code: SEK) is the currency of Sweden. Both the ISO code "SEK" and currency sign "kr" are in common use for the krona; the former precedes or follows the value, the latter usually follows it but, espec ...

, which was repaid by December 1990, provided funding. In August 1985, in

Höganäs Höganäs () is a locality and the seat of Höganäs Municipality, Scania County, Sweden. Its population was 14,107 in 2010. Höganäs is nationally known for its ceramics industry, Höganäs Keramik. Höganäs Keramik is part of Iittala Gr ...

became the publisher responsible for the project. The project specifications were for a modern reference work based on a

scientific Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

paradigm In science and philosophy, a paradigm ( ) is a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitute legitimate contributions to a field. The word ''paradigm'' is Ancient ...

incorporating

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

and environmental issues. Pre-orders for the work were unprecedented; before the first volume was published in December 1989, 54,000 customers had ordered the encyclopedia. The last volume came out in 1996, with three supplemental volumes in 2000. 160,000 copies had been sold as of 2004. Associated with the project are also: *''NE:s Ordbok'', a

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged Alphabetical order, alphabetically (or by Semitic root, consonantal root for Semitic languages or radical-and-stroke sorting, radical an ...

in three volumes (1995–1996) *''NE:s Årsband'', complementary volumes concerning current events and fast changing information distributed annually since 1997 *''NE:s Sverigeatlas'', an atlas of

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

(1998) *''NE:s Världsatlas'', a world atlas (1998) *''NE-spelet'', a quiz game with 8,000 questions (1999) In 1997, the first

digital Digital usually refers to something using discrete digits, often binary digits. Businesses *Digital bank, a form of financial institution *Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) or Digital, a computer company *Digital Research (DR or DRI), a software ...

form of the encyclopedia was released on six

CD-ROM A CD-ROM (, compact disc read-only memory) is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains computer data storage, data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold b ...

s (later on

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

as well), and in 2000 as an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

subscription The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century. It ...

service. The online version contains the dictionary as well as an updated version of the original encyclopedia. It has 356,000 entries, 183,000 of which are encyclopedic articles. The service has been completed with several features not available in the printed version, such as a Swedish–English dictionary. In 2018, after a decision to remove the authors' names from the

byline The byline (or by-line in British English) on a newspaper or magazine article gives the name of the writer of the article. Bylines are commonly placed between the headline and the text of the article, although some magazines (notably '' Reader's ...

of online articles, ''SVT'' reported the encyclopedia may be forced to remove thousands of articles due to copyright infringement unless the authors' names are added back.

References

External links

{{Lang, sv, Nationalencyklopedin
- Official site (in Swedish)

- Christofer Psilander's comprehensive bibliography on Swedish encyclopedias Encyclopedias in Swedish General encyclopedias Swedish online encyclopedias 1989 non-fiction books 20th-century encyclopedias 21st-century encyclopedias

History

See also

References

External links