News

Félag um átjándu aldar fræði (the Icelandic Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies) is holding a symposium under the title Af raunvísindum fyrr á öldum (On the sciences in earlier centuries) in Þjóðarbókhlaða, the library building at Arngrímsgata 3, in the lecture hall on the 2nd floor, on Saturday 4 May 2013. The symposium begins at 13:30…

Users on the University network can now access Westlaw UK – Westlaw International. The user is taken directly into Westlaw UK. To access Westlaw International select first  Services in the top of the panel and then  Westlaw International.  Short videos and a detailed user guide are available to guide you through using the main aspects of Westlaw…

The National and University Library of Iceland has systematically collected Icelandic web pages since autumn 2004. Our web archive is far more thorough in Icelandic material than the comparable Internet Archive, which collects web pages from all over the world. The web archive is enormous and now holds almost two billion items (harvested URLs minus…

Symposium on Eiríkur Magnússon librarian in Cambridge (1833-1913) at the National and University Library of Iceland 20 April 2013 at 14:00-16:30 On Saturday 20 April 2013 at 14:00-16:30 a centenary symposium will be held to commemorate the scholarly life and work of Eiríkur Magnússon (1833-1913), librarian at the University of Cambridge. An exhibition highlighting aspects of Eiríkur’s career will…

Europeana, the European portal for digitized cultural heritage, now sports a new interface designed to facilitate access to the collections of hundreds of European cultural institutions. Among the many new features are responsive layouts for smartphones and tablets and an even more user-friendly search function. The metadata of Europeana is now published with a Creative…

The annual meeting of the Iceland Consortium for Electronic Subscriptions (national access to electronic databases and journals) will be held in the lecture hall of the National and University Library of Iceland, Arngrímsgata 3, 107 Reykjavík, on Friday 22 March at 15:00. Agenda Minutes of the 6th annual meeting Work of the steering committee Annual…

Throughout March we offer free access to the database Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present’ which provides entries on authors’ lives and writing careers, contextual material, timelines, sets of internal links, and bibliographies. Click on  Orlando and log in: Username: womenshistory2013 Password: orlando

The manuscript collection recently acquired a Bible that once belonged to Elka Björnsdóttir. Elka was a worker in Reykjavík and wrote detailed diaries on everyday life in Reykjavik in 1915-1923. Those diaries are preserved at the manuscript collection and were recently published by the University of Iceland Press. The Bible contains short notes from Elka…

On the 24th of January the private archives of some members of the Icelandic Social Democratic Party were opened to the public in a formal ceremony at the Library. The catalogues for the archives can be found here.

Last summer Elsevier of Oxford published an eight-volume scholarly work, Comprehensive Renewable Energy. The work covers all aspects of renewable energy and one of the volumes, edited by professor Þorsteinn I. Sigfússon, is dedicated to geothermal energy. Last week in Washington the American Publishers’ Association announced that the work had been awarded the prestigious PROSE…

An exhibition on food and dining culture in Reykjavík in the first half of the 20th century will be opened Friday the 8th of February 2013 at 20:00 P.M. Guests will be offered sago porridge with raisins and cream. Short lectures by: Reynir Ingibjartsson, Auður Styrkársdóttir, Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir and Guðjón Friðriksson who will provide a…

On Thursday 31 January  at 10:30 Bragi Þ. Ólafsson will give a lecture on Jón Árnason’s folk tale manuscripts in the Library’s lecture hall. An exhibition is now on to mark 150 years  since the first volume of Íslenskar þjóðsögur og ævintýri (Icelandic Folk Tales and Fairy Tales) was published  Jón Árnason’s folk tales have lived…