Thus far the scientific research of library science, bibliography and book science was carried out by separate structural units of the NLL, implementing a series of research projects of national importance. In 2007 the Research and Development Department was established. It engages in internationally innovative, practice oriented research work, thus performing the typical functions of digitising research and development centres of any representative digital library in Europe and in the world. The Department cooperates not only with the research and development departments of other libraries, but also with the leading European universities and research centres in the world.

Due to the research functions performed by the Department the NLL differs from other institutions, which are engaged in digitising, and thus is specific and unique among other libraries of the Baltic regions. The Department plans to take up a number of lines of research that are important for Latvia in cooperation with international partners and invited experts:

• a pilot project to develop a long-term systematic computer linguistic training course

• research in semantic ontology

• development of semantic filters for search purposes

• processing and analysis of natural language

• the attraction of the user’s knowledge base in the process of using digitised resources.

The further work envisages not only supplementing the existing resources and improving the digitising of the contents, but also the development of new products, attracting interdisciplinary resources from the leading research centres in the world.

In 2007 the NLL was granted the official status of a research institution. In 2008 the Research Council of the NLL started functioning.