Exhibition “Is a Library a Birthright”

From 28 February 2025, the exhibition “Is a Library a Birthright” will be on display at the National Library of Latvia. The exhibition reveals the culmination year of the “500 Years of Latvian Books” series of events.

The “Is a Library a Birthright” is an imaginative, intellectually reflective and also political exhibition that is a must-see for everyone who loves books, and even more for those who do not yet love them. The central element is Riga City Library (1524) – the first public library in Riga which was established five centuries ago during the iconoclasm most of whose collection was destroyed in the World War II. The story of Riga City Library is full of drama and vivid, surprising details. The exhibition uses it as an example to encourage us to think and discuss changes in society and thought processes today, emphasizing that the library as a model of the world reflects far broader regularities in both individual and collective efforts to organize, comprehend and understand the world around us. Literacy, books and libraries are important elements, also in shaping a vision of the future, and the exhibition uses the history of libraries to ask again a question: would we want the future to be in the hands of an illiterate and uncritical thinking society?