From 12thto 18thJune 2023 Dr. Nicoleta-Roxana Dinu from the National Library of Romania, Institutional Development Department, visited the National Library of the Netherlands (KB – Nationale Bibliotheek van Nederland) in order to learn more on the role of a national library serving its citizens and cooperating with other similar institutions, emphasizing the collaboration of KB with the Dutch public libraries network, research projects in library and information science, and the enhancement of user services.
12th – 18th June 2023
Very interactive and full of detailed information, the professional visit covered various activities and projects carried out in the host institution.
Even though the legal deposit and web archiving are not stipulated by Dutch law, KB puts all its effort to collect and to deposit the print and electronic national heritage.
Coping with the latest information technologies, the library has
moved its collections more to the digital environment. Nowadays the KB holds a unique amount of high quality data which is available on several platforms.
In order to make its collections more visible, usable and long term sustainable for Dutch people and other cultural institutions in the future, the KB created the Research Agenda 2023-2026 which focuses on a series of topics: design of an online public space, use of artificial intelligence in an ethically responsible manner, quality of digital content, creating automatic metadata to make smarter and richer content descriptions, digital accessibility, conservation techniques, ways to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
I was given a guided tour where I discovered the reading rooms, one of them dedicated to the Dutch heritage (books, newspapers, albums, etc.) and the storage areas. I was surprised to learn that the KB holds the second largest public chess book collection in the world.
I had the chance to see a newspaper on a microfilm reader, using the special equipment located in the Microfilms and Microfiches Room.
The week of professional meetings, analyzing different aspects of the activities carried out at the National Library of the Netherlands has been extremely useful for me. This visit is considered from both sides as the beginning point of a new collaboration between the two libraries.
“Thanks to the generous bursary offered by CENL for which I am very grateful, I had the opportunity to discover the KB in person in a special year: celebration of 225 years of its foundation (Happy anniversary!), and will be the host of several meetings of the most important world libraries gathering, the IFLA Congress the next August.
Many thanks to the colleagues of the National Library of the Netherlands with whom I had an open and fruitful dialogue. Special thanks to Sander van Kempen and Erik Boekesteijn, Senior Advisors, who received me very kindly.” (Dr. Nicoleta-Roxana Dinu, Librarian, National Library of Romania)
“It was a pleasure in meeting with Roxana and exchanging knowledge about the network of public libraries in the Netherlands and in Romania and the differences of working for a National library in both our countries. Roxana is an open and eager to learn person and therefore a great person to get to know” (Sander van Kempen, Senior Advisor, National Library of the Netherlands).
https://www.kb.nl/en/about-us/our-mission
https://www.kb.nl/en/research-find/for-researchers/data-services-apis-and-downloads
