A talk on how to search for Lithuanian data in US archives

Vaitkutė gave a talk on the search of Lithuanian data in US archives. Photo: National Library of Lithuania/ Vygaudas Juozaitis

This summer, the National Library of Lithuania hosted a talk on how to search for Lithuanian data in US archives and genealogical websites presented by Karilė Vaitkutė, head of the Genealogy Department at the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture in Chicago (USA).

Vaitkutė shared her experience with how to search for Lithuanian material in various US archives, as well as paid and free-of-charge genealogical websites, how to decipher the documents found, how to determine whether they belong to a family member under consideration, and how to overcome the obstacles that occur during the research. In her talk, she also answered more specific questions concerning the search for Lithuanian relatives in the USA and gave an overview of the different sources available.

For the past ten years, Vaitkutė has been working in the field of genealogy, helping Lithuanian Americans whose grandparents and great-grandparents came to the USA before World War I or after World War II to find their roots in Lithuania and Lithuanians who are looking for their relatives in the USA.

Forward, or Die

The book will be a revelation for readers as well as scholars of journalism and cultural history. Photo: Vygaudas Juozaitis / National Library of Lithuania

On October 19, Vytautas Gedgaudas‘s book, Pirmyn arba mirk (Forward, or Die), was presented at the National Library of Lithuania.

Jolanta Mažylė, Associate Professor of the Centre for Journalism and Media Studies at Vilnius University and the winner of the Gedgaudas Prize, is to blame that the articles written by a long-time editor-in-chief of the Lithuanian-American newspaper, Dirva, the only Lithuanian accredited to the Paris Peace Conference and the only Lithuanian journalist who wrote about the Nuremberg Trials for the Lithuanian American press, finally made into a book. The author of the book has managed to preserve an exceptional testimony of WWII, which will find its place among the memoirs of Lithuanian soldiers who served in foreign armies.

The book consists of three parts. The first and second parts contain Gedgaudas’s texts about the Foreign Legion in which he served during WWII. Mažylė believes that the third part of the book, which contains Gedgaudas’s articles published in Lithuanian American press after he immigrated to the United States of America, will be a revelation not only for readers but also for scholars of journalism and cultural history. The book is illustrated with photographs taken by Gedgaudas himself.

The National Library of Lithuania Hosted a Virtual Language Forum

In recent years, an increasing number of foreigners has been interested in the Lithuanian language and Lithuania. People want to learn the language for different reasons. If in the past a lot of foreigners wanted to study the Lithuanian language because it was the mother tongue of their significant other, today a large number of students search for their Lithuanian roots and identity.

On January, Vytautas Magnus University Academy of Education, in cooperation with the National Library of Lithuania, organized a virtual forum, “Teaching the Language in the 21st Century: Current Experiences and Future Trends,” in which researchers talked about multilingualism, language learning, the survival of a native language in the 21st century, Lithuanian education in the world, and the importance of creativity and innovations teaching the language.

This year, the researchers of the National Library of Lithuania have been giving lectures to students of the Lithuanian Saturday schools abroad on the topics of Lithuanian cultural history, language and literature.

LiLaEst-2020

Photo: Sevilė Charsika / National Library of Lithuania

On August 17, a three-day conference of all three Baltic national libraries, “LiLaEst 2020,” took place in Lithuania. The theme of this year’s event was “Possibilities for Reusing Digitized Content.” Specialists from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia had the opportunity to discuss the situation of each national library in the field, share good practices and visions for the future.

The main idea of ​​the meeting, which takes place every two year in one of the countries, is that culture should not be locked up in repositories or archives and must be shared. Therefore, cultural institutions, libraries among them, also care about presenting cultural objects to the public. Advanced digital tools and the Internet have opened up vast opportunities for sharing cultural heritage. Reusing works have become especially popular now, when one can create new meanings by transferring a work to another context or adding unexpected elements to it. Representatives of the national libraries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and experts gave presentations and shared their experiences, plans and problems of opening and reusing data stored at the libraries.

Continue reading “LiLaEst-2020”

An On-line Summer Course for Teachers of Lithuanian Schools Abroad

For the third summer in a row, the National Library of Lithuania has been contributing to the teachings of teachers of Lithuanian Saturday schools abroad organized by Vytautas Magnus University. This year, twenty teachers from Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, Belarus, Estonia, USA, Poland, Norway, the Netherlands, Russia, Germany and Ukraine took part in an on-line course.

The participants of the opening ceremony organized in the National Library of Lithuania. Photo:
Vygaudas Juozaitis / National Library of Lithuania

The event started on July 27 with the World Summer Language and Culture Forum. First lady Diana Nausėdienė, the chairman of the Seimas Committee of Education and Science Prof. Eugenijus Jovaiša, the rector of Vytautas Magnus University Prof. Juozas Augutis, Deputy Director General for the Development of Information Resources and Services of the National Library of Lithuania Sandra Leknickienė and other distinguished guests participated in the Forum.

Part of the lectures for teachers took place at the Library. A few lectures were given by the Library staff. On July 31, the lecture on the contemporary Lithuanian literature was presented by the head of the Lithuanian Studies Unit Prof. Dainius Vaitiekūnas. On the same day, another staff member of the unit, chief researcher Prof. Jolanta Zabarskaitė discussed with teachers how to build personal vocabulary. On August 8, Dr. Dalia Cidzikaitė, also from the Lithuanian Studies Unit, gave a talk about the late Soviet era in Lithuania and its representation in rock-n-roll music.

International Conference “Religious Communities in the Age of Migration” in Kaunas

Dr. Ilona Strumickienė

On October 24-25, 2019 the Vytautas Magnus University Research Cluster “Church Relations with State and Society in Lithuania” invited a broad international group of researchers to the conference on the religious communities in the age of migration. The goal of the conference was to explore and discus the religious history and contemporary processes of the Catholic Church, religious communities (such as Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Lutherans and Orthodox), migration, and diasporas.

Researchers from various research fields: religion, theology, history, political science, sociology, cultural science, public communication, and art history representing different countries (Belarus, Finland, Hungary, Holland, US and Lithuania) gathered to the conference.

Two researchers from the Adolfas Damušis Democracy Studies Center of National Library of Lithuania participated in the conference. Dr. Ilona Strumickienė, director of the Center, in her presentation “Returning Migrants and Their Influence on Lithuania’s Social and Religious Life” talked about re-emigration processes and the religious influences and expressions brought back by re-emigrants. In presentation “Listening to ‘the Words of God’ on Lithuanian-American Radio,” Dr. Ina Ėmužienė analyzed various forms of religion in the American radio media and its different expressions and impact on the Lithuanian-American community.