The Institute of Bibliography has the following functions:

• preparing the national bibliography

• the distribution of the Latvian legal deposit copies; working with electronic publications, including harvesting or the collection of Latvian Internet resources

• preparing the public statistics of the publishing sector

• ensuring the functioning of the international standard numbering ISBN, ISMN, ISSN in Latvia

• processing, cataloguing and indexation, including re-cataloguing of documents

• standardization of library work.

The national bibliography is created in close cooperation with publishers who deliver to the library the just published copies of the works, thus leaving testimonies of themselves in Latvian culture history. It also covers information about editions published outside Latvia, but linked to Latvia or Latvians (Letica), as well as information about articles in periodicals (analytics). On the way towards the digital library the Latvian national bibliography has undergone changes. The technological solutions offered by partners of cooperation Exigen Services Latvia and Lursoft IT allow the readers from their own computers anywhere in Latvia or elsewhere in the world to access the huge corpus of information. The software developed by Exigen Services Latvia helps to include the information of the printed bibliographical indexes into the databases, where complete information about books that have been ever published in Latvia can be found, in the future – also the whole of analytics (approximately 2.5 million entries). In cooperation with Lursoft IT from the bibliographical entry in the analytics database the access to full article texts of more than 40 periodicals is ensured.

The database of monograph editions, in its turn, reflects the information not only on the published books, but also the ones being prepared for publication. Systematic work is carried out to collect, preserve and ensure the accessibility of the digital heritage publications, and, in cooperation with the publishers, to create Latvian electronic depository. Since 2006 Latvian Internet resources with culture historical, research or otherwise noteworthy content are being collected. Digital heritage publications are systematically collected, and infrastructure for their long-term preservation and ensuring their accessibility is under construction.