The fourth volume of the series Življenja in dela (Lives and Works) not only represents a reworking of the series, but also draws attention to other aspects of the new approach to biographical research at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. It is a part of a wider concept of developing the Novi Slovenski biografski leksikon (New Slovenian Biographical Lexicon), which will be progressively introduced to readers over the next few years, following the model of its predecessor published from 1925 to 1991. An online version of the NSBL is also planned as part of the Slovenska biografija (Slovenian Biography), which will be updated as a “living document” and facilitate an exchange opinions and information with visitors to websites with biographical portraits of selected people.

Meanwhile, the fourth volume of the series Življenja in dela, entitled Nova slovenska biografija (The New Slovenian Biography), is about to be published as the first printed harbinger of the revamped Slovenski biografski leksikon (Slovenian Biographical Lexicon). The series will initially be published in two subseries: Biografske in bibliografske študije (Biographical and Bibliographical Studies), which has been issued since 2000, and Kulturnozgodovinske študije (Cultural History Studies), which was introduced three years ago with Igor Grdina’s book Med dolžnostjo spomina in razkošjem pozabe (Between the Duty of Memory and the Luxury of Oblivion). Other biographical schools in Central Europe have already been publishing similar series for several decades. Nova slovenska biografija is the result of work done by researchers at the ZRC SAZU Institute of Cultural History and members of the NSBL editorial board. The book primarily covers biographies of people that for various reasons were not presented in full or were not even included in the first edition of the SBL. Sometimes the reasons were simply biological (they were still alive when the article for the SBL was being written and their biography has remained unfinished), but in most cases this was due to the lack of historiographical interest either because of the unavailability of sources or because a given individual deviated from the historiographical mainstream. The book also contains biographies of certain people who played a key role in the development of the SBL. These include the Director of the Cooperative Bank Ivan Slokar, who financially supported the project’s launch, as well as the biographies of two SBL editors-in-chief, Izidor Cankar and Franc Ksaver Lukman.