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Donate a Computer to Your Library!

Attention Latvian businesses: Join us! The Latvian National Library Foundation invites all businesses to take advantage of this unique opportunity to do something important for themselves, their families, and the entire community. If you are replacing computers at your place of business, donate your used computers to a Latvian school library – they need your support!

It’s no secret that here in Latvia, information is not equally available everywhere and at all times. It is becoming an exclusive commodity. The Latvian National Library project was initiated in order to help promote the dissemination of knowledge in the Latvian community, so that, regardless of their place of residence, our citizens would have access to information services that would allow us to better compete in the European economic sphere. The project prescribes that by 2007, all of Latvia’s libraries will be modernized and linked in a unified network, and that by 2010, Latvia will have a new National Library building, designed by architect Gunnar Birkert, which will be the core of this information system. The amount of funds raised over these years by the Latvian National Library Foundation has exceeded LVL 500,000. The majority of these donations have been put into the development of Lighnet at rural libraries. With the help of the Foundation, over two hundred libraries have received used computers. By equipping these used computers with new software, we granted them a new life and gave library users the opportunity to work with Internet resources.

The successful campaign “Donate a Computer to Your Library!” continues. A/S Hansabanka and other businesses are prepared to donate more than three hundred workstations in support of the L.N.L. project. All of the computers will be equipped with the necessary software, which will be donated by SIA Tilde, SIA Management Information System Latvia, and SIA Microsoft Latvija. The computers were brought into working condition by A/S Komerccentrs DATI grupa.

The Foundation has evaluated the current situation in the development of the unified library information system, and sees the objective need to continue the campaign to support Latvian school libraries.

A study of Latvia’s regional, urban, and parish school libraries, led by the state agency Kultūras informācijas sistēmas (Cultural Information Systems), found that 18 % of libraries don’t have a single computer; 46 % of libraries have one computer, which is used by library staff; 36 % of libraries have a computer available to library users; and 93 % of libraries have access to an internet connection. This means that this year alone, Latvian school libraries need 680 fully equipped computers.

By getting involved in the campaign “Donate a Computer to Your Library,” you will help link your company with socially important values, reinforce your company’s reputation, and demonstrate your goodwill. The Foundation works to disseminate the names of its donors in the mass media. Your support will be published in the LNB project’s Donor Registry, which is publicly available on the Latvian National Library Foundation’s Web site, www.gaisma.lv, and on the television screen in the window of the LNB building at Kr. Barona iela 14.

The Foundation has been granted the status of a public-benefit organization. This allows donors to reduce their corporate income tax up to 85 %, in accordance with Paragraph 20 of the law On Corporate Income Tax.