We Latvians are great readers. We just have to have a home library! Not only because the book spines look great in a bookcase and we can rub it in how accomplished we are but also for the reason that reading is a sort of protest against the modern day tyranny of speed and haste.

The Riga City Library was founded in 1524 when elsewhere in Europe books were the property of secluded monasteries. It's not only the oldest public library in Latvia but also one of the oldest in Northern Europe. The collection started with four books of religious content which the Riga town council had donated for "general use". In 1941 during a German air raid the Riga Library which was situated in the Town Hall building caught fire. It held 400,000 volumes at the time. About 50,000 were rescued, including 61 incunabula, 287 palaeotypes and a number of 16th and 17th century Latvian books.

There had to be at least a calendar and a Bible in each farmstead. Latvian bibliophile Jānis Misiņš (1862―1945) was the man who founded the first public Latvian culture library, assembling it book by book. He put together the fullest collection of national literature treasures ― books, photographs, manuscripts, job publications. More than 27,000 volumes were donated to the city of Riga.

There are more than 2000 libraries in Latvia; the sea of documents and books is now easier navigable by using the modern networks of communication. Majority of Latvian libraries ― 32 college, 902 public, 57 specialist and 1190 school libraries ― are linked together in a network. We have all the basics but when the new building of the National Library is built every single library in Latvia will belong to a unified information network. We could actually call it the Network of Light. Provided you have Internet access you can already use the services of digital libraries and with the interlibrary loan system you can borrow books from other libraries, including those abroad.