In January 2017, The National Museums of World Culture, Sweden adopted a new policy for open web publishing. Moving forward from there, we are now taking steps to make available series of publications previously issued by our museums, which have been digitized within the Google Books initiative.

• Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm (1929-)
• Bulletin of the Museum of Mediterranean and Near Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm (1961-)
• Annals of the Ethnographic Museum, Gothenburg (1952-)

The publications all concern objects in the museum collections, and other issues of immediate relevance to activities in the museums throughout the 20th century. Some editions are currently out-of-print, or available in just a few research libraries.

In digital form, we can make the content more easily accessible both to researchers and to the general public, opening new paths to research and perhaps new perspectives on “old” themes. We are convinced that these resources may also be of great interest to an international research community, and are pleased to help shed new light on the work of previous researchers.

Initially, we are sharing the earliest editions—that is, the first decade of each title. We’ll be adding a new batch each month. We hope, of course, that the authors who have contributed to the publications throughout the years share our enthusiasm for free access to research. However we are also ready to adjust to any objections. Just get in touch!

About the author

Since the autumn of 2016, Johanna Berg is responsible for The Digital Museum of The National Museums of World Culture, Sweden. She has previously worked with digital heritage issues at The Swedish National Heritage Board and Digisam, a part of the Swedish National Archives.

Image above: Johanna Berg / The National Museums of World Culture, Sweden. CC-BY.