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Nationalencyklopedin, volumes 1-10 of 20, 1989-1996

"Bil" (automobile), from Nationalencyklopedin

Nationalencyklopedin (NE) is the most comprehensive contemporary Swedish language encyclopedia, initiated by a government grant. The printed version consists of 20 volumes with 172,000 articles; the Internet version is slightly larger (260,000 articles as of June 2005).

The project was born in 1980, when a government committee suggested that negotiations be initiated with various publishers. This stage was finished in August 1985, when Bra Böcker in Höganäs became the publisher responsible for the project. The project specification showed demands for a modern reference work based on a scientific paradigm as well as bringing out gender and environmental issues.

The anticipations on the work were unprecedented; before the first volume was published in December 1989, the encyclopedia had been ordered by 54,000 customers. The last volume came in 1996, supplemented with three additional volumes in 2000.

Associated with the Nationalencyklopedin project are also:

• NE:s Ordbok, a dictionary in three volumes (1995-1996)
• NE:s Årsband, complemental volumes of current events and often changing information distributed annually since 1997
• NE:s Sverigeatlas, an atlas of Sweden (1998)
• NE:s Världsatlas, a world atlas (1998)
• NE-spelet, a quiz game with 8,000 questions (1999)

In 1997, the first digital form of the encyclopedia was released on 6 CD-ROMs (later on DVD as well), and in 2000 as an Internet subscription 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, e.g., a Swedish-English dictionary.

• Nordisk familjebok (1876-1957)
• Swedish Wikipedia

• Nationalencyklopedin - Official site (in Swedish)