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The The Early Years of Lithography exhibition will be opened in the Level 4 gallery of the National Library of Latvia (NLL) at 16.00 on 18 June. Visitors will have the opportunity to see valuable graphic-art works made with the lithography technique in the first half of the 19th century, from the collection of the K. Ubāns Art Reading Room. These will be complemented by video stories portraying the technical process of lithography and assessing the place classic lithography holds and its ability to coexist with contemporary technologies. Free admission.

For the first time the annual collection of the National Library of Latvia (NLL) "Publishing statistics of Latvia 2018" is released also in English and contains information on the number and print runs of publications of 2018 in an aggregate form.

Johann Friedrich Steffenhagen (1744–1812) became the court printer for the Duke of Kurzeme (Courland) in 1769. By introducing new business principles he soon also became the leading publisher in the region and especially a leading figure in publishing books in Latvian. His and his descendants' ability to choose which books to print and perceive readers' wishes, to keep up with the latest in contemporary printing and book design, as well as his energetic, entrepreneurial temperament made the Steffenhagen publishing and printing house one of the success stories of its time.

From its foundation in 1919 until 2014, when the move to the new building designed by Gunnar Birkerts took place, the National Library of Latvia never had its own home. The construction of this home had been planned since 1928, but for almost a century, the Library was forced to adapt to a range of architecturally diverse historical constructions – imposing bank buildings, apartment buildings, factories, cellars – a total of 38 addresses, none of them suitable for library operations. People moved from one place to another, but the collection was sorted and moved even more frequently.