National bibliography in Latvia: tradition and change.

The Latvian printed national bibliography in general has one unique feature: it covers the whole period to time since the first book written in Latvian was published in 1525 until the present time. Another unique characteristic is its inclusion of the indexes of analytical records of all available periodicals beginning from the mid-18th century. Discusses a retrospective conversion project underway at the Bibliography Institute of the National Library of Latvia begun in 2000, which envisages the design of a unique national culture database that involves converting the print indexes into MARC format (about 136,000 text pages). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]