NEWS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 
“National Bibliography: From Written to Digital”
“Search in the writings!” was the motto of Jānis Misiņš’ life. Will it nowadays be substituted by “Search in the cyberspace?” 

Commemorating the 75th anniversary since beginning of regular work in creating national bibliography in Latvia and the 75 anniversary of International Federation of Library Association, the National Library of Latvia is organizing an International conference
 “National Bibliography: From Written to Digital”.

  • Time:September 12- 13, 2002
  • Place:Riga Free Port Office building, Kalpaka bulvāris 12
  • Working languages:Latvian and English
The beginnings of creating bibliographies in Europe date back to early Mediaeval period. The Father of national bibliography in Latvia is Jānis Misiņš, who compiled “Latviešu rakstniecības rādītājs”(“Index of Latvian Penmanship”) at the beginning of the last century for his private collection of printed materials (which served as the basis for Misiņš’ Library). Since 1927 “Valsts bibliotēkas biļetens”(“Bulletin of the State Library”) was regularly published. Today the national bibliography is an indicator, characterizing the country identity, witness of its historical and culture heritage. In the neighbouring countries Estonia and Lithuania the national bibliography data bases are proclaimed registers of state importance by law. 

The conference will be a part of the chain of conferences, which have taken place in the Baltic states: “Role of Bibliographic Control in the Global Information Infrastructure”, Vilnius, 1998; “National Bibliography in the Changing Information Environment”, Tallinn, 2000.

The choice of topics is consciosly separated from the historical aspects, which were already discussed in the conference “Latvian Book and the Library: 1525- 2000” in 2000. The goal of the current conference is to investigate the functions and mission of national bibliography in the digital era, when a significant part of the publications in the country is made up from information which can be available only electronically and in the cyberspace. 

Themes of the conference:

  • Mandatory copy in creation of national bibliography;
  • Identifying, archiving and availability of electronic publications;
  • Demands for bibliographic record in the global environment of information;
  • Retrospective conversion and document delivery;
  • National and international cooperation in data exchange.
The conference will be introduced by the opening of exhibition “Bibliographic Resources of Latvia” in the Exhibition Hall of the National Library of Latvia on September 11 and closed by discussion “CONSENSUS” with the participation of guest speakers. All participants of the conference welcome!
| What is bibliography | Bibliography in the world | Bibliography in Latvia |
| LAL Section of Bibliography | ALAL Bibliographic Commission |
| Department of Library Science and Information Science of the University of Latvia |
| Standards of bibliographic description | Data base | News |
| Home page |