Professional visits

There are two tour options on 8th October for registered conference delegates:

A. Lithuanian National Radio and Television
B. Lithuanian Institute of Literature and Folklore combined tour with Lithuanian Central State Archive

You should indicate your preference when you register online. Professional visits are included in the Full Registration price or the Day Registration of 8 October.

The Lithuanian National Radio and Television archives comprise three large archives: the Radio archive, the Television archive and the Television news direction archive.
The unique and extensive Lithuanian Radio audio archive accumulated over many years is being opened to the public.
Currently, audio material (Lithuanian history and its cultural heritage) preserved in the LR archives (about 40,000 hrs) includes recordings on audio tapes and vinyl, dating from the beginning of the 20th century, through the Soviet period, to present day independent Lithuania.
Today LR is in the process of digitizing its radio archives and saving on modern carriers, and making them available to the public through the Internet access.
Visitors entering the Lithuanian Radio virtual audio library can now access a vast amount of knowledge on historical-cultural heritage, for self-education, scientific research or creative activities.
The LR archive offers a large choice of music works, radio plays, fairy-tales for children, historical and culture programmes recorded at the LR Studio. The Archive also contains the latest live productions. The recently implemented project Creation of the Lithuanian Radio Virtual Audio-library was funded by the European Union and the Government of Lithuanian Republic: http://lrvab.lrt.lt/en/

The Lithuanian Folklore Archive was established in Kaunas in 1935. It was a little scientific centre containing good technical equipment, sufficient number of skilled folklorists, and collaborating with other European archives. In 1935–1939 an exceedingly valuable sound collection was gathered together by the outstanding Lithuanian folklorist Zenonas Slaviūnas, who recorded about 6,000 pieces of folklore on shellac discs. The end of the tradition of north-eastern Lithuanian polyphonic music is documented in these recordings, the voices of the last performers of polyphonic songs sutartinės, the sounds of the multi-pipe whistles skudučiai and wooden trumpets ragai are exposed, ancient work, wedding and calendar songs of southern Lithuania, tunes played on fiddle, accordion and instrumental ensembles performances are also recorded. The polyphonic sutartinės have become a national symbol, the standard of Lithuanian folk music nowadays. Different sound materials stored in the Folklore Archive of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore continues to be almost unknown to the public. Publication of these sound recordings would open opportunities to hear the primal sounding of peculiar vocal and instrumental polyphony, would promote ethno musicological research, and enable computer-aided analysis of Lithuanian folk music.	Photo: Alma Pater/Wikipedia
Lietuvos Centrinis Valstybės Archyvas (the Lithuanian Central State Archive), is the largest in the state archival service. It is under jurisdiction of the Lithuanian Chief Archivist Office at the Ministry of Culture. Its main mission is collecting and safeguarding paper based and audio-visual documents for future generations, providing permanent public access to its collections.
The Archive's Department of Image and Sound Documents was founded in 1955. From 1965 until 2002 the archive was independent, from 2002 it was reorganized and re-integrated into the Lithuanian Central State Archive.
The institution's audio-visual complex consists of film, sound and video recordings as well as photo documents. It holds the main repository of cinema heritage in Lithuania, with 7,612 titles: Lithuanian chronicles from 1920-1940, chronicles of the Second World years, diverse Lithuanian newsreels and sketches from the post-war period, Lithuanian feature films, documentaries of independent film studios and individual creators, starting from 1991.
The oldest original film is The funeral of Dr. Jonas Basanavicius, created in 1927, but copies of the 1919-1926 years chronicles can also be found.
Four basic tasks are performed by the archive’s film department – acquisition, documentation, access and preservation. In 2003 the archive began to digitize films by using self-constructed digitization equipment. The material is transferred to computer, edited, subtitled, sounded and copied to DVD or mini DV according to the archive's technical possibilities and customers’ requests. 155 titles of films have been digitized as safety copies on mini DV, and further 243 titles of films have been digitized as loan copies on DVD.
The Archive recently started a 30-month project, “Lithuanian documentaries on the Internet”, with the support from EU Structural Funds, to preserve Lithuanian documentary heritage by digitisation and to provide access for all on the web of 1,000 Lithuanian documentaries created between 1919-1960.