The Swedish Literature Bank is a non-profit organisation whose objective is making classic Swedish literature and

literary criticism A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature's ...

freely available in digital editions. It is a collaboration between the

Swedish Academy The Swedish Academy (), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish language authority. Outside Scandinavia, it is best known as the body t ...

, the

National Library of Sweden The National Library of Sweden (, ''KB'', meaning "the Royal Library") is Sweden's national library. It collects and preserves all domestic printed and audio-visual materials in Swedish, as well as content with Swedish association published ab ...

, the

Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities also called simply the Royal Academy of Letters or Vitterhetsakademien abbreviated KVHAA ( or or ) is the Sweden, Swedish Swedish Royal Academies, royal academy for the Humanities. Its ...

, the Swedish Language Bank at the

University of Gothenburg The University of Gothenburg () is a List of universities in Sweden, university in Sweden's second largest city, Gothenburg. Founded in 1891, the university is the third-oldest of the current List of universities in Sweden#Public universities, S ...

, the Swedish Society for Belles-Lettres, and the Society of Swedish Literature in Finland. The Swedish Literature Bank publishes Swedish literary classics from the Middle Ages on, including "minor classics" and major historical and religious works,"Ny litteraturbank på Internet"
Vetenskap & miljö,

Sveriges Radio Sveriges Radio Aktiebolag, AB (; "Sweden's Radio") is Sweden's national publicly funded radio programming, radio broadcaster. Sveriges Radio is a public limited company, owned by an independent foundation, previously funded through a television ...

, 21 January 2004 in four digital formats: searchable e-text, facsimiles of the original edition, PDF files and EPUB files. The texts are based either on the first edition or on a subsequent scholarly edition. Authoritative presentations of authors and genres are also provided. The initiative began after a suggestion by Sven Lindqvist in the early 2000s.Anton Emanuelsson
"Alla får lån direkt i Litteraturbanken"
''

Dagens Nyheter (, ), abbreviated ''DN'', is a daily newspaper in Sweden. It is published in Stockholm and aspires to full national and international coverage, and is widely considered Sweden's newspaper of record A newspaper of record is a major nationa ...

'', 7 May 2011 . The Swedish Academy held a seminar exploring the idea in 2002, and in 2004 a two-year pilot project began with funding from the

Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation The Riksbankens Jubileumsfond Foundation is an independent Foundation (nonprofit), foundation with the aim of promoting high scientific quality, encouraging cross-disciplinary research, and contributing to capacity building in Swedish research with ...

. The project foundation was then organised in 2006. Starting at a time of rapid expansion of Swedish higher education institutions, the project was designed to address the problem of the many new Swedish colleges needing to set up libraries with expensive older literature, and to make older Swedish literature freely available anywhere in the world. In contrast to the older

Project Runeberg Project Runeberg () is a digital cultural archive initiative that publishes free electronic versions of books significant to the culture and history of the Nordic countries. Patterned after Project Gutenberg, it was founded by Lars Aronsson and ...

, where anyone can help proofread the scans, the Literature Bank texts are proofread by scholars. They are chosen by an editorial committee, around certain themes such as works by female writers, older crime fiction and

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

, and from suggestions by the public. The project has been described as "a Swedish mini-variant of Google Library"."Litteraturbanken.se – en svensk minivariant (?) på Google Library?"
Bibblans blogg,

Vadstena Vadstena () is a locality and the seat of Vadstena Municipality, Östergötland County, Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It bo ...

Library, 11 May 2011

References

{{Reflist

External links

The Swedish Literature Bank
official site, introduction in English Swedish literature Swedish digital libraries