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The name of the file is Svensk bibliografi 1700-1829 (SB17), indicating that it is a bibliography, not a catalogue, and that the coverage is Swedish books printed between 1699 and 1830. The file presently contains close to 50.000 records. It is the result of a project carried out in Kungliga biblioteket 1976-1987.
“Swedish books” are understood in this context as independently published items printed or published within the current borders of Sweden and such items printed or published abroad in Swedish. The reader should observe that even a broadsheet might qualify as a “book” according to the above definition.
Two categories were excluded from the bibliography, academic dissertations and periodicals, because there were already comprehensive, printed bibliographies for these categories. Commercial issues of academic dissertations are included, however, and also periodicals not covered in the printed bibliography.
No other categories were excluded, but the coverage of legislative print, birthday, wedding and funeral verses and ephemera is not comprehensive. The bibliography is, however, open-ended, and can be expected to grow slowly.
The dominating language in the material is of course Swedish, but a considerable number of other languages is represented. After Swedish the best represented languages are Latin, French, German and Finnish, in that order.
The records are based primarily on copies of the collection in Kungliga biblioteket, which is the national library of Sweden and holds the most comprehensive Swedish collection of all libraries. For a history of the institution and its collections, please refer to Ulla Ehrensvärd et.al., 'The Royal Library', in: The Cultural Heritage in Sweden. Preserving the Past for Posterity, Stockholm, 1998, pp. 41-75 (ISBN 91-520-0528-3) and Underbart, underbart. Intellektuella strävanden under fem sekel. Några glimtar ur Kungliga bibliotekets samlingar. Stockholm, 1997 (ISBN 91-7000-165-0).
All records have been elaborated book-in-hand. As SB17 is a bibliography, the records aim at describing the hypothetical make-up of a published item as originally intended by the publisher. Details from examined copies may be presented in the notes as evidence or as additional information. The cataloguing rules were elaborated especially for the bibliography. They build on ISBD and AACRII, but the influence from descriptive principles established within the field of textual bibliography is strong, indeed. This influence is particularly apparent in the pagination statement. Titles in non-latin script are transliterated according to national or international transliteration schemes. Copies of the rules are available on request.
The name authority is done consistently on all records. The names are complete, as far as it has been possible to establish. Dates of birth and death are given for the majority of names. Where they are missing, they are unknown. Alternative names, that is, family names before nobilisation or women's married names, are provided in the author field. Alternative spellings of names must be searched for as names of persons, not as authors. The title field has no subfields. It reflects the complete title except most of the personal titles which appear in book titles. Included in the title quotation is the imprint. The imprint is repeated in standard form in the imprint field. Thus a search for Stockholm as place of publication will retrieve all records for items printed in Stockholm, and a search for the title word Holmiae will retrieve all records for items with the Latin form of the city's name in the imprint. The edition field is lacking, the edition statements are only to be found embedded in the title fields. There is often a general note field, and there is always a specific note field giving standardised information of the typeface of the item, given as “Fraktur” for Gothic and “Antikva” for Roman types. All records have language codes for publishing language and original language. All records also have subject terms on a general level.
Multivolume works are catalogued on two levels: one describing the work as a whole, also indicating number of volumes, edition and publication dates, and the second level describing each volume independently, indicating volume title, edition statement when different from the higher level statement, publication year and pagination. In the HPB file automatical linking has not been achieved, so that you have to enter a second search either for the “parent” or for the “children” record. The indications on the full display help to achieve this second search.
Search by author and/or title words, place of publication, publisher and publication year. Restrict the search by language codes, typeface term or subject terms or search directly on subject terms. A search for subject term Religion combined with subject term Biography will e.g. retrieve all records for funeral sermons. Different relator codes have been assigned to different kinds of intellectual responsibility. The relator codes are
| aut | author | cmp | composer | |
| trl | translator | ill | illustrator | |
| edt | editor | oth | other function | |
They may all be used with the limit function. After a search result has been retrieved, choose LIMIT. On the limit screen, click on OTHER and choose tag 700 and enter the requested relator code in the VALUE box. You will then reduce the search result to the records containing e.g. a code for editor.
Illustrated books in this file can be searched by LIMIT, OTHER, ILC, or by combining the searches LIMIT, OTHER, NOTE, ILL and LIMIT, OTHER, 300, PL.
To search for Imprint Year or Publication Year in this file, use only Publication Year and Arabic numerals! If you know the exact form of the imprint year you can search for it as Title Word, as the exact form is always present in the title field.
There are a few uniform titles. To retrieve all records for:
The book of Hymns, search for title word “Psalmboken”, truncate after this word!
The book of Common Prayer, search for “Evangelier och epistlar”, truncate!
The Bible, search for “Bibeln”, truncate!
The Old Testament, search for “Gamla testamentet”, truncate!
The New Testament, search for “Nya testamentet”, truncate!
War bulletins, search for “Bulletin”, truncate!
Calendars, search for “Almanack”, truncate!
There is also some standardised information in the general notes which can be used in searching. Searching for the note word “pris” (=price) will retrieve records for books with price information. Searching for note words “inv”, “del”, “pinx”, “sc”, “fec”, “lith” will retrieve records for books containing signed engravings or lithograpic illustrations. Searching for note words “imprim”/“imprimatur” or “approb”/“approbatur” will retrieve records for books which have censorship statements.
Gunilla Jonsson, “Consortium of European research libraries”, in Biblioteksbladet , 1992:10, pp. 306-7.
The name of the file is Svensk bibliografi 1600-1699 (SB16). It is the result of a retroconversion project carried out in Kungliga biblioteket 1997 based on Isak Collijn, Sveriges bibliografi. 1600-talet. Vol. 1-2, Uppsala 1942-44, 1946. The file presently contains just over 6,100 records.
The bibliography basically covers publications by Swedish authors, regardless of printing place, and publications printed in Sweden. The exclusions, however, are many, and not always consistently applied, but newspapers and dissertations (that is academic, synodal or school dissertations), legislative print, birthday, wedding and funeral verses, ephemera and war bulletins are excluded.
The Swedish language is represented in over 3,000 records, of the others more than 2,400 record publications in Latin. Greek is represented in a little more than 100 records, and the same goes for Finnish. There are about 450 records for German material. Other vernacular languages are represented in smaller numbers.
The bibliography brings together findings from many libraries in Sweden and in the rest of Europe. The primary basis, however, is the collection in Kungliga Biblioteket, which is the national library of Sweden and holds the most comprehensive Swedish collection of all libraries. (For a history of the institution and its collections, please refer to Underbart, underbart. Intellektuella strävanden under fem sekel. Några glimtar ur Kungliga bibliotekets samlingar. - Stockholm 1997. (ISBN 91-7000-165-0) and to “The Royal Library” in The Cultural Heritage in Sweden. Preserving the past for posterity. – Stockholm 1998. (ISBN 91-520-0528-3), pp. 41-75.\
Collijn used material and information he had collected over several decades, and especially the German holdings institutions may have changed their names, been merged into other institutions or disappeared altogether. It has not been possible to go back and verify the proper designation of their current holding institution or if publications are still extant. That circumstance is the explanation of the note information in many records, “Unverified location –1942”.
Collijn did not apply any consistent manner of cataloguing. In the process of retroconversion the records have been edited into a UNIMARC format and, as far as possible, made to comply with our current rules, Katalogiseringsregler för svenska bibliotek. 2. Ed. Lund 1990 (ISBN 91-7018-324-4), which is an applied translation of AACRII.
Multivolume works are catalogued on two levels: one describing the work as a whole, also indicating number of volumes, edition and publication dates, and the second level describing each volume independently, indicating volume title, edition statement when different from the higher level statement, publication year and pagination. In the HPB file automatical linking has not been achieved, so that you have to enter a second search either for the “parent” or for the “children” record. The indications on the full display help to achieve this second search. There are, however, very few such records in SB16, although one of them comprises some 100 volumes!
Search by author and/or title words, place of publication, publisher/printer and publication year. Restrict the search by language codes, subject terms or search directly on subject terms. Imprint places can always be retrieved with modern, standardized spelling, and when appropriate, normalized forms of printers’ names have been recorded to enhance searching.