Surveys of the National Cultural Monuments Administration

Ephemera are publications with a small number of pages. The collection includes different types of ephemera of an extensive thematic spectre, such as Song Festival programs, cinema and theatre repertoire posters, various product catalogues, and booklets.

The collection consists of digitized materials from the VHS collectionof the National Library of Latvia, mainly covering the period from the 1970s to the turn of the century. They reflect the political, social and cultural events of diaspora Latvians, such as the song and dance celebrations , festivals , summer camps and Midsummer celebrations, as well as life stories and home archive materials of prominent diaspora personalities . The collection also holds a range of materials from the...

The collection contains digitised CDs from the collection of the National Library of Latvia. These have mostly been published or created in Latvia; foreign CDs are included if they feature works by Latvia's composers or include performers from Latvia . The content predominantly includes music of various genres: choral music, pop music, rock and country music, classical music, operas, operettas, musicals, as well as albums of children's songs. Different centuries are represented here – music...

Collection includes extensive selection of Latvian classical choir songs , as well as recordings of Latvian singers, performances of symphonic and vocal symphonic works, recordings of diaspora song celebrations and concerts. There are alsorecordings of fairy tales and plays, as well as poetry readings, often by the authors themselves. When it comes to the popular music, you can listen to recordings of various Latvian artists and groups, as well as the records of diaspora rock bands and...

The Song Celebration Repository is a digital collection dedicated to the history and traditions of the All-Latvia Song and Dance Celebration from its beginnings to the present day. The collection contains more than 6 000 items from the digitised collections of cultural and memory institutions – images, posters, photographs, publications, celebration-organisation documents, music books, sound recordings, reminiscences and other materials from chief conductors and chief choreographers.

The New Media Culture Centre RIXC carries out projects that combine art, science and state-of art technologies. The main activity of RIXC is related to updating the latest and most important topics in digital art, including innovative experimental projects in art, science and technology both in Latvia and abroad. Various multimedia resources created by RIXC are accessible in the collection. The collection of the New Media Culture Centre RIXC is available in the library network.

Latvian communities outside Latvia have existed for almost 200 years, still preserving the Latvian way of life and culture. Since the beginning of the photo era, these Latvians have captured their journeys outside of Latvia in photographs, which over time have become unique historical evidence not only of the family, but also of the entire Latvian community.

At the beginning of the 20th century, following the agrarian reform Latvians were the main landowners and agriculture became the basis of the entire economy of independent Latvia; the people and society at that time immortalised important life events in glass plate negatives. The collection includes glass plate negatives from the collections of various photographers and cultural heritage institutions.

A journey back in time, looking at the capital city in colour photographs taken between 1960 and 1999

The collection of drawings of the National Library of Latvia is a unique collection of works on paper (drawings, watercolour, gouache, and pastel paintings, collages, etc.) with more than 1,500 items (ca. 850 pieces by foreign artists and ca. 750 by Latvian artists). The largest and most important part of it is the collection of foreign drawings by Peter Böttger (1936) including works by artists of German, Dutch, French, Italian and other national schools, where great attention should paid to...

The recordings included date mostly from 1970s to 1990s. They cover both the political events and changes of the late 20th century in Latvia and worldwide, and cultural and social developments in the Latvian diaspora, as well as other topics. The collection also contains interviews with prominent cultural and political figures. The part of the collection created by the National Library of Latvia consists of more than 200 records. Accessible freely on the web.

In 1973, the Latvian telegraph agency "LETA" was renamed LATINFORM. It operated under the Council of Ministers of the Latvian SSR and was a branch of the TASS news agency of the Soviet Union. In 1990, its historical name LETA was restored. In 1931, the LETA Press Photo Department was established with the aim to document cultural, social, political, etc. events, and prepare visual materials for the needs of the news agency. The news agency’s photo materials of 1989-1996 are included in the...

We are a rich nation, our wealth is our culture, traditions, language, folklore and people. The "Talsu local history" collection stores a wide range of materials that reflect the riches of the Talsu region. The collection includes evidence of the era stored in the libraries of Talsi region and donated by the residents - photographs, manuscripts, audio recordings, video recordings and other unique materials.

Audio recordings of the Latvijas Radio program "Latgale" ("Latgolys Vuords") (1980-2001) from the collection of the Latgale Cultural History Museum are available on the network of the National Library of Latvia.

The notable Latvian cinematographer and photographer Eduards Kraucs (1898-1977) took photographs of the construction of the Ķegums power plant 1-2 times a week on a regular basis between 1936 and 1940. The Ķegums power plant was the largest energy facility in the Baltics and Northern Europe in the first half of the 20th century – an engineering structure in the construction of which unique technological solutions in Europe at that time were used. The Ķegums power plant plays an important role...

The collection consists of animated films produced by the animation film studio Dauka and its predecessor Telefilma–Rīga. Altogether there are more than 100 videos made in the period from 1969, when the first animated film “Lietaina diena” (Rainy Day) was shot by Telefilma-Rīga, until 2010, when the studio Dauka ceased its operations. The animation film studio Dauka was founded in 1991 by Ansis Bērziņš and Roze Stiebra who were also the principal scriptwriters and directors of animated...

The collection was created in cooperation with the Presidential Chancery of the Republic of Latvia and contains documents from the historical presidencies of Latvia.