1 of 20

Backup Lithuania:

The eKultūra Platform

Aušrinė Žilinskienė

Director General of

The Martynas Mažvydas

National Library of Lithuania

Yerevan, 8.20.2026

2 of 20

3 of 20

452,186 physical visitors in 2025 (+13.4% compared to 2024)

3,7-3,8M virtual visitors per year

More than 1,200 events held annually

5,550 book loans in 2025

(+18,9% compared to 2024)

11,101 educational programme participants in 2025 (+80 % compared to 2024)

4 of 20

6,4M document units

2,1M publication titles

4,000 e-book licences annually

Readers have access to

34 licensed databases

48,689 new documents per year

5 of 20

The country’s largest digital space for cultural content

23,7 M Eur

2023–2026

6 of 20

III phase

II phase

Digitisation

The history of eKultūra

2005–2008�The first project brought together mainly memory institutions. The main focus was on creating the portal and digitising selected “golden” cultural heritage objects – mainly texts and images.

2010–2012�The partnership remained largely the same, but more cultural heritage objects were digitised, still focusing mainly on texts and images.

2018–2021�More partners joined the initiative. In addition to digitisation, we started developing e-services, such as virtual exhibitions, interactive maps, and a tool for playing music from digitised sheet music. The content was still predominantly text and images.

2023–2026 – eKultūra�This stage marks a major expansion. New partners joined from cinema, performing arts and contemporary art, broadening the platform beyond traditional memory institutions. We introduced curated content and significantly expanded the types of digital content, especially audiovisual and 3D content.

7 of 20

WHY?

Digitisation and preservation – not only by memory institutions
Digital content is used not only by experts
Preservation of cultural content is a national resilience

Audiovisual content
3D objects (buildings)

We already had the eHeritage portal. However, it focused mainly on memory institutions. But we needed to preserve the bigger picture of Lithuanian culture. That meant including not only libraries, archives and museums, but also performing arts, contemporary art, cinema, folklore and other cultural institutions.
A survey done by the Ministry of Culture revealed that the eHeritage portal was used primarily by experts. In other words, we had created a resource for ourselves rather than for the wider public. We wanted to change that and engage a much broader audience.
Mostly we had Images, text documents. We did not have a national audiovisual archive,
3D digitisation was almost non-existent. That is why we placed special emphasis on preserving our most valuable buildings and other cultural heritage objects in 3D.

8 of 20

9 of 20

What was needed to make eKultūra a reality??

10 of 20

Finansuoja

Partnerships

11 of 20

Register of Cultural Heritage

Archives IS

eCinema

Libraries IS

National TV

and Radio Mediatheque

Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage

Audiosensory library

Museums IS

More than 150 institutions

12 of 20

Tinklaraščiai

Partneriai: 20 vnt.

Tiekėjas: 80 vnt.

Digital Tools

Visi tinklaraščiai

Virtual Tours

Collections

Maps

Virtual exhibitions

13 of 20

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

Object and face recognition

AI tools

Metadata

Audio ir video transcription

14 of 20

15 of 20

Buildings

ART

BOOKS

TV and RADIO PROGRAMMES

AUDIOVISUAL

CONTENT

THEATER, PERFORMING ARTS

FICTION and DOCUMENTARY FILMS

16 of 20

Agreements with collective management organizations

LATGA, AGATA, AVAKA

Over 120 copyright agreements

17 of 20

How to reach people?

Follow

18 of 20

Not just search,

but engage!

19 of 20

Curated Content:

100+

Virtual Stories – Scrollytelling

20 of 20

Thank you! Ausrine.Zilinskiene@lnb.lt