About Svenska tidningar

In Svenska tidningar (ST) you can explore almost 400 years of Swedish press history. The archive contains material from nearly 2,000 different newspapers and periodicals. To access copyright-protected material, you need to visit the National Library of Sweden (KB), or another library that offers the full version of Svenska tidningar. However, newspapers and periodicals older than 100 years can be read freely from anywhere.

In addition to KB, the following libraries in Sweden offer full access to Svenska tidningar.

Content

Svenska Tidningar is constantly updated with both historical titles and contemporary material. It takes four months from the date a newspaper is published until it is available in the archive. Svenska Tidningar also contains a small number of periodicals.

Svenska Tidningar includes all newspapers from 2014 onwards, as well as the entire KB collection of newspapers published up to and including 1906. For the period 1907–2013, only selected parts of Swedish press history are available. KB lacks funding to digitize historical newspapers and is almost completely dependent on external funding to fill this gap.

Microfilm

KB began digitizing its contemporary newspapers in 2014, but there is a significant collection of microfilmed newspapers up until 2013. Newspapers have been microfilmed since the 1940s, and between 1979 and 2013 KB microfilmed all newly published Swedish newspapers. Many newspapers are therefore only available on microfilm at KB’s premises.

List of newspapers on microfilm, available at KB and other Swedish libraries.

Data.kb.se

Data.kb.se is KB:s database for open data. Digitized newspapers avaialble for larger downloads and large scale analysis, such as text and data mining (TDM), can be found there, together with API documentation.

Other facts

Estimated number of newspaper pages in KB’s archive: 160 million

Estimated number of journal pages in KB’s archive: 40 million

Estimated number of microfilmed newspaper pages at KB: 70 million

Number of digitized newspaper pages in ST: 39,5 million

Number of digitized periodical pages in ST: 512,000

Number of digitized pages in ST that are out of copyright: 7,5 million

Good to Know About the Collections

Users should be aware that the National Library of Sweden’s collections and search services contain older terms, images, and other content that may be perceived as offensive, derogatory, or outdated.

Expressions that reflect the attitudes of the authors/creators at the time may evoke strong emotions today, but they are necessary for our understanding of the past and our present.

The National Library’s mission is to collect, describe, preserve, and provide access to Sweden’s published cultural heritage.