Editors of the National Encyclopaedia of Latvia in Bratislava

Santa Briede and Daira Vēvere in Bratislava

Santa Briede and Daira Vēvere, text editors of the National Encyclopaedia (NE), visited the editorial office of Encyclopaedia Beliana in Bratislava for job shadowing on 28–29 April 2026, according to the Erasmus+ project (Project code: 2025-1-LV01-KA121-ADU-000318227).
The purpose of the mobility was to gain professional experience and knowledge about the organization of work and editorial processes (article development, editing, illustrating, checking, publishing), technological solutions and the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and challenges posed by AI tools.
At the beginning, Nina Glausová, the interim director of Encyclopaedic Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and Tatiana Šrámková, the editor-in-chief of the Online Encyclopaedia Beliana, gave a general introduction to the main work in Beliana. In Slovakia (unlike in Latvia), the encyclopaedia has two versions – printed and electronic. During the visit it was emphasized that the main focus is still on the publication of printed volumes, and that currently, the most significant work is the preparation of the tenth volume of the encyclopaedia.
Later, individual meetings were organized with the editors of Beliana. Text editor Zuzana Vargová showed how editing is done in practice, mainly for the printed volume. The Slovak Encyclopaedia, unlike the NE, uses a pre-prepared list of articles. This is necessary primarily for the printed volumes. Later, text editor Jozef Adámať explained how work is done directly with the electronic version. In the case of Beliana, work with electronic version does not differ significantly from the printed one.
Santa Briede and Daira Vēvere also gave a presentation on the NE to their Beliana colleagues. The main topics were the most significant encyclopaedic works in Latvia prior to the NE and the creation of the NE (development of methodological principles, organization of work, collaboration with authors, the editing process, uploading texts to the editing platform). Following the presentation, a discussion took place with the colleagues from Beliana. It was observed that both NE and Beliana have similar problems related to finding authors and their lack of resources or professional skills for writing specific articles. To solve this problem, the NE is looking for cooperation with foreign encyclopaedias and other research institutions.
The second day was dedicated to illustrations: image selection and the use of AI in image processing/generation. The Latvians introduced their Slovak colleagues to the solutions employed for illustrations in the NE (www.enciklopedija.lv) and showed some examples of various types of illustrations (images, graphs, tables, infograms, etc.) that are used to visualize the content of the NE.

A brief message from Santa and Daira: It is always valuable to gain such experience to learn and be inspired for future work. Thanks go to our Slovak colleagues for the fruitful days!