National Library of Latvia

Rakstā analizēts pasaulē pazīstamākā latviešu arhitekta Gunāra Birkerta (1925–2017) radošais veikums pasaules, ASV un Latvijas arhitektūras kontekstā, kā arī kopsakarā ar 2025. gadā atzīmēto Birkerta simtgadi un pirmās latviešu grāmatas piecsimto gadskārtu. Kā pamatojums Birkerta arhitektūras savpatībai dots ieskats Birkertu dzimtas vēsturē, uzsverot viņa tēva – daiļrades psiholoģijas un socioloģijas pamatlicēja Latvijā Pētera Birkerta (1881–1956) – radošo mantojumu. Rakstā dots hronoloģisks ieskats galvenajos notikumos (izstādes, konferences, publikācijas) ceļā uz Birkerta simtgadi un analizēta Birkerta arhitektūras tipoloģija, akcentējot viņa daudzējādo sabiedrisko un kultūras būvju klāstu – bibliotēkas, universitātes, skolas, baznīcas un muzeji ir Birkerta arhitektūras redzamākā daļa. Rakstā specifiski analizēta Birkerta ietekme uz modernisma virziena attīstību 20. gadsimta otrajā pusē, uzsverot pamatoti lietoto ekspresīvo formu viņa projektētajās ēkās, simbolu un metaforu klātbūtni projektos, kā arī īpašo talantu daudzveidīgi izmantot dabisku gaismu būvēs virs zemes un pazemē. Dots arī konspektīvs ieskats par Skandināvijas kultūrtelpas un atsevišķu modernisma dažādu periodu meistaru ietekmi uz Birkerta arhitektūras valodu un secināts, ka tā veidojusies no dažādu iespaidu un paša arhitekta personības izaugsmes sarežģītas sintēzes.

The first record of Atrichops crassipes (Meigen, 1920) (Diptera, Athericidae) in Latvia is reported, together with additional findings from Lithuanian waters in 2015. The data are based on larval records collected during freshwater macroinvertebrate research and water‑quality monitoring. Atrichops crassipes represents a new Diptera species record for Latvia and marks the northernmost limit of the species known range. Our data suggest that A. crassipes is expanding its range northward, possibly driven by climate warming.

The Digital Library of Latvia is a national digital resource where Latvian cultural institutions – libraries, archives, museums, organisations – and private collectors collaborate, preserve and present Latvia's digital cultural heritage in one place. The Digital Library provides access to more than 3.8 million digital items of various kinds – texts, images, museum objects, archival items, video and audio recordings, 3D objects – offering a synergy of content from more than 650 partners. It has become an important tool for the preservation and promotion of Latvia's cultural heritage, bringing together the digital collections of various institutions and individuals, providing broad access to Latvia's cultural assets and promoting research, education and cultural understanding. This article discusses the Digital Library's cooperation with various partners, focusing mainly on regional libraries as custodians of important cultural heritage. The involvement of regional libraries has diversified the content of the Digital Library, fostering synergies between different partners and revealing the diversity of Latvian culture. The National Library of Latvia, as a Centre of Excellence for Digital Cultural Heritage, provides essential support to regional libraries, enhancing their capacity to build and manage their digital collections. The Digital Library, as part of the Latvian Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) platform, is not only a technological solution, but also a tool for the long-term preservation of Latvia's cultural heritage. It provides a common infrastructure, standardised processes and a support system that enables the efficient management and preservation of digital content. The creation and development of a single DCH platform has generated sustained interest in digitisation and fostered cooperation among libraries, museums and other institutions in regional Latvia. However, to achieve even more ambitious goals, it is necessary to further develop the platform and adapt support activities for changing needs.


 
 
 The paper presents the results of a study on the dissemination of socio-political and aesthetic ideas of Socialist Realism doctrine in the Latvian periodicals Literature and Art (LitArt) and The Flag. Several programmatic, ideologically saturated articles that were published in The Flag in the 1940s were compared to the rest of the corpus to explore the proliferation and persistence of similar ideas in the course of following decades. Authors have employed methodologies commonly used for plagiarism detection: fingerprinting and the comparison of document similarity based on word embeddings and document similarity measures. In particular, three perspectives were used to examine the similarity and reuse of texts: comparison of matching 5-grams processed by the winnowing algorithm and comparison of documents based on the TF-IDF and Doc2Vec embeddings and cosine similarity metrics. To facilitate the analysis, the results were loaded in the open-source version of Neo4j graph database. The findings were further explored and evaluated qualitatively to identify the distribution of direct citations, frequently reused phrases and most similar documents.
 
 

Amphibian populations are increasingly threatened by global change and the study of their genetic diversity is a major conservation priority. Western palearctic tree frog species of the Hyla arborea group are commonly distributed across Europe and the Middle East and many have declining populations. We performed a PRISMA systematic review to gain insight into the genetic diversity of H. arborea group. Sixteen published studies were included in the final qualitative analysis. While the genetic diversity of H. arborea group species was widely variable, it could often be explained by phylogeographic history. Populations in Western and Northern Europe had lower genetic diversity, with some populations also affected by habitat fragmentation. However, important regions of high genetic diversity were found in the Balkan peninsula for H. arborea sensu stricto and around the Black Sea for H. orientalis. Genetic diversity of H. molleri, H. savignyi, H. meridionalis, H. felixarabica, H. intermedia, H. sarda has been investigated only across extensive phylogeographical studies, while data regarding their genetic diversity at the local level are missing. Through our review, we identify knowledge gaps about the genetic diversity of the H. arborea group that require further investigation, of and illustrate how filling these gaps might translate into future conservation efforts.

Human history has been shaped by global dispersals of technologies, although understanding of what enabled these processes is limited. Here, we explore the behavioural mechanisms that led to the emergence of pottery among hunter-gatherer communities in Europe during the mid-Holocene. Through radiocarbon dating, we propose this dispersal occurred at a far faster rate than previously thought. Chemical characterization of organic residues shows that European hunter-gatherer pottery had a function structured around regional culinary practices rather than environmental factors. Analysis of the forms, decoration and technological choices suggests that knowledge of pottery spread through a process of cultural transmission. We demonstrate a correlation between the physical properties of pots and how they were used, reflecting social traditions inherited by successive generations of hunter-gatherers. Taken together the evidence supports kinship-driven, super-regional communication networks that existed long before other major innovations such as agriculture, writing, urbanism or metallurgy.

This editorial introduces the research articles on the topic of “Youth”. Further, it discusses the recent developments of censorship and self-censorship.

The handwritten Latvian folk songs in Johann Gottfried Herder’s manuscripts collection at the Prussian Cultural Heritage Manuscript Department of the Berlin State Library (also known as “Livonian collection”, as titled by Leonid Arbusow) are a testimony of the folk songs collection campaign at Herder’s request in 1777 and 1778. The authors who responded to Herder’s request and collected, commented, and translated Latvian folk songs have been identified in some cases, but there are also manuscripts of unidentified authorship; the identity of their authors has been widely discussed in previous studies. In the present study, handwritings in documents held at the National Library of Latvia, the Academic Library of the University of Latvia, the National Archive of Latvia, and the Historical Archive of Latvia have been compared and all collectors of Latvian folk songs in Herder’s personal archives have been identified. It has been found that the unidentified handwritings belong to Heinrich Baumann, Gustav Bergmann, Jakob Benjamin Fischer, and August Wilhelm Hupel. It has been discovered that manuscripts No. 50 and No. 53.1 of Herder’s personal archives were written by Gustav Bergmann; manuscript No. 51 was written by Jakob Benjamin Fischer (it includes texts from the 50th manuscript by Baumann and the 52nd manuscript by Bergmann as well as some original texts which were missing in both Baumann’s and Bergmann’s manuscripts); manuscript No. 52 was written by Gustav Bergmann, and manuscript No. 53.2 was written by August Wilhelm Hupel. Herder selected parts of manuscripts No. 50, 51, and 52 to publish them in a separate section titled “Fragments of Latvian Songs” (Fragmente lettischer Lieder) in his collection “Folk Songs” (1778/1779). Encompassing six texts, “Fragments of Latvian Songs” is the first set of Latvian folk songs in Herder’s volume. There is also a second collection, titled “The Song of the Spring” (Frühlingslied) in which five texts are included. The original handwritten texts of “The Song of the Spring” have not been found in Herder’s personal archives in the Berlin State Library; therefore it must be assumed that Herder received yet another handwritten collection of folk songs which has been lost. For this reason, the number of songs in the lost collection remains unknown as well. Considering that “Fragments of Latvian Songs” were selected from eighty submitted texts (which included different variations of the same song), we can assume that “The Song of the Spring” has been similarly selected from a wider amount of texts according to rigid principles known only to Herder himself. Thanks to the cooperation of Livonian authors, Herder had a broad collection of Latvian folk songs in his possession.

After nearly two decades without a diphtheria case in Latvia, the disease reappeared in 1986. From 1990 to 1996, case counts were highest among adults 40-49 years of age, school-aged children, and adolescents. Nonetheless, the average annualized incidence of disease was highest among infants and preschoolers. In August 1995, mass vaccination efforts began to provide adults 25-60 years of age with at least one dose of vaccine. By the end of the year, a 77% coverage rate was achieved, resulting in a decrease of reported diphtheria cases by 1996. From February to September 1997, special outreach efforts were focused on hard-to-reach populations; as a result, by June 1997, 55% of adults had received three doses of vaccine. While decreases in the incidence of and morbidity from diphtheria have occurred, additional efforts still need to be concentrated on improving vaccination coverage in adults and children <2 years of age and in reducing mortality from diphtheria.