Dear All,
The finishing year has been interesting, creative and full of events. When parting with it, we are sharing our reminiscences about the journey that we embarked upon this year when celebrating the 100th anniversary of the establishment of the National Library.
When celebrating its centenary, the National Library had a particular interest in the efficiency and development of partnerships. A successful example is the signing of a cooperation agreement with the market investigation company “Kantar”. This agreement resulted in a representative impact assessment study of Lithuanian libraries.
Libraries have always been institutions that bring people together and allow them to use the information preserved there. The Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania is not only a custodian of the treasury of information but also provides innovative services to the users. Up to the present day, the Library has been inviting junior visitors to Make, Discover, Preserve, Be Inquisitive, Recognize and Capture at the PATS SAU (“Do-It-Yourself”) Makerspace, and on 18 December, it is presenting a creative space for adults, the Media Workshop.
An international project “Digital Approaches in Cultural Heritage: Towards a Pan-Baltic Cooperation Network” carried out in 2018-2019 has come to a close. It was organized by the National Library of Latvia in cooperation with the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuanian, the University of Rostock, the National Library of Estonia, and the National Library of Sweden.
Dear visitors, on the 20th of December National Library is closing at 6 p.m.
On the occasion of its centenary, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania organized an international research conference. Among its participants, there were executives of national libraries from numerous European countries, representatives from Lithuanian public libraries, communication and information professionals and representatives of the publishing sector. The event attracted librarians, book researchers, bibliographers and historians from countries of Eastern, Central and Northern Europe (Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Sweden, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and North Macedonia) as well as from Portugal, Great Britain, etc.
Prof. Dr. Andrius Vaišnys, Chair of the National Library’s Scientific Council
The Martynas Mažvydas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania celebrates its centenary. On 14 November, the Library hosted the centennial afternoon titled “Life Library”. Among the guests of the event there were His Excellency the President of the Republic of Lithuania Gitanas Nausėda, members of the Seimas and the Government of the Republic of Lithuania, Ambassadors to the Republic of Lithuania, honorary social, research, cultural and education figures, publishers and the National Libraries partners and fellows.
Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania invites you to attend a solo exhibition of paintings by Mykolė titled “Five Regions” dedicated to Lithuanian landscapes featuring artworks that convey the subtleties of different landscape settings and the change of seasons. The series of artworks that depict the country’s different regions will be exhibited at the same time thus Lithuania will be represented as a unified whole encompassing differences, unique features and natural beauty in general through the lens of contrasts, otherness and diversity.
On the occasion of its centenary, the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania is organizing an international research conference. At the conference’s main session, Luiz Oosterbeek, Professor at the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar, Portugal and Secretary-General of the International Council of Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH) UNESCO, France, will share his insights and experience regarding critical reasoning and flexibility; Liz Jolly, Chief Librarian of the British Library will speak about collaborating to advance knowledge and mutual understanding among librarians, partners and leaders; and Dr. Jānis Krēsliņš, Senior Academic Librarian for Research Affairs at the National Library of Sweden, will be giving the presentation “Memory in a Time of Digital Inattentiveness: an Institutional Perspective”.
The Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania invites you to watch a story of a young Ukrainian woman, who went looking for her father, who had fallen in the Russian-Ukrainian war, and turned into a warrior’s daughter.
Dear visitors, we kindly remind you that on Thursday, 1 November, we will honor All Saints' day (aka Vėlinės) so the library will be closed. Therefore, on 31 October the library will work one hour shorter.
On October 9, an international scientific seminar “Experiences of Documentary Heritage Research and Dissemination in European Libraries” will take place in Vilnius, Lithuania. The event is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. Researchers and scientists from Great Britain, Poland, Latvia, Belarus and Lithuania will present their papers.
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, the exhibition “Verba Volant, Scripta Manent” displays the most valuable, interesting, and significant 14th-21st-century books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, sheet music, and shellac records. Many objects on display are included in the UNESCO Lithuanian National Memory of the World Registry.
Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania invites you to the “Conductor with a Brush” – an exhibition of children's book Illustrations by Kęstutis Kasparavičius. The exhibition was organized on the occasion of the international conference "Visual Language in Children's Literature". The conference is organized by the National Library together with the Lithuanian Branch of the International Association of Children and Youth Literature (IBBY) as part of the Reading Promotion Program approved by the Ministry of Culture and the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport. The international conference and other events will be held in October 9-10 this year at the Conference Hall of the Parliament of the Republic of Lithuania and the National Library.
The workshop “At the Source: Baltics”, which took place on 16–20 September, united professionals from Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and Israel working with the Jewish documentary heritage. A partner of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania, which hosted the event, was the National Library of Israel.
The Children’s Spaces is a non-conventional library for our youngest readers. It has been established following the Swedish children’s library model which is based on the features of psychological and physical development of children. Here, the focus is on the ways children see and explore the world or how they discover various objects in their surroundings, including books. In this part of the library, books are not shelved alphabetically: our youngest readers and their parents can find the books by category. They can choose books about animals or adventure, funny or terrifying books, poetry or literature in foreign languages, thus there is no need to remember the name of the author of the book’s title. The books are displayed to attract children’s attention with their front covers facing outwards. Their spatial arrangement is also important: the bottom shelves contain toy-books for the smallest readers who still crawl on their hands and knees; picture books arranged by category are placed on the shelves at a height that toddlers can reach; and older children can get the books from the top shelves using a special step ladder.
Libraries seek to modernise access to information by updating their collections of traditional print publications with electronic resources in their attempts to build a knowledge society and to ensure high-quality and responsive provision of information to their users. Electronic publications are vital for today’s libraries which strive to provide a fast and comprehensive access to the latest scientific information to their users.
On 25–26 September, Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania will host an international academic conference aimed at investigating the World War II war crimes trials and their mediatization processes. It will be the first conference of this kind organised in Lithuania by the Branch Office of German Historical Institute Warsaw and Institute of Baltic Region History and Archaeology of Klaipėda University.
On 12 September, there are 100 days left until the official 100th anniversary of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library of Lithuania. This national cultural institution meets this day by presenting new publications surveying the 100th anniversary of the National Library and future vision as well as diverse festive programme.
