The collections of the Reading Rooms of Social Sciences and Humanities represent the most recent and topical literature of these branches. The collections of the reading-rooms are updated annually and more than 3 000 new Latvian and foreign editions are added to the collection. At present the department   holds the total of approximately 40 000 books, 200 CD-ROMs.  The users have a representative collection of reference literature at their disposal: encyclopaedias, dictionaries, handbooks, bibliographies, etc.  The offer of Latvian and foreign licensed databases is expanding constantly.

The Social Sciences Literature Collection  holds the recent, most topical and requested  books on philosophy, psychology, religion, politics, sociology, statistics, economics, culture, pedagogy, history, ethnography, geography -  in total more than 20 000 editions in Latvian, English, Russian, German, French and other languages.  More than 2000 reference editions are held in the open-access part of the collection: encyclopaedias, dictionaries, handbooks, as well as the World Bank publications.  The subscription full-text databases and more than 10000   e-magazines are available on-line.

The contents of the collection changed significantly after 1997, when   increased funding was allocated to the library for the acquisition of foreign branch literature.  The reading-room still holds from the previous years the works of outstanding authors in Russian and German, but currently the collection is expanded more with the editions in English. During the recent years multi volume encyclopaedias on comprehensive among these is the encyclopaedia in 26 volumes International Encyclopaedia of the Social&Behavioral Sciences.   The readers are also offered significant serial publications on philosophy   - Husserliana, Critical Assessments of Leading Philosophers, The Cambridge Companions to Philosophy, Oxford Handbooks in Philosophy; politics - Sage Library of International Relations, the Politics of Corruption; economy - Critical Concepts in the History of Economics, etc., as well as the works of a number of Nobel Prize winners.  Among the history books the books from the series The History of Civilization enjoy great demand, as well as biographical books on outstanding personalities. The series Culture and Customs of… could be of interest both to those travelling to foreign countries, and those interested in the culture and customs of other nations.

The publications of the World Bank are also accessible in the Reading Room.

At the end of 1992 the NLL and the World Bank (WB) concluded an agreement on including the NLL into the list of WB deposit copy libraries. In accordance with this agreement the NLL regularly receives the editions published by the World Bank and its branches - International Finance Corporation, Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency, as well as literature published by the Oxford University Press and J. Hopkins University Press (approximately 200 editions annually).
At present the number of editions that the Library has received exceeds 1 800 items (of these more than 20 are CD-ROM databases).
The editions of the World Bank cover a diverse range of topics: the economy of developing states, finances, statistics, trade, social issues, education, culture, rights, etc. The recent acquisitions are placed in the free-access part; the most topical of them are displayed in the new acquisitions exhibition stand in the reading room.

More about the World Bank publications:

http://www.worldbank.org/publications
World Bank Office in Latvia (information about the World Bank projects and activities in Latvia) – http://www.worldbank.org.lv

We welcome the suggestions  from our users and invite you to participate in the building of our collection, making it more complete, topical and interesting.