in two small rooms of the Parliament building in the Toompea Castle. During the time of the independent Republic of Estonia from 1918 to 1940, the library developed and grew fast. In 1919, the library began to receive a legal deposit copy of all printed matter published in Estonia. In 1921, the first international exchange agreements were concluded. In 1935 the State Library established an Archival Collection of all publications in the Estonian language and about Estonia. This was the beginning of a systematic acquisition of printed matter on Estonia and the Baltic countries. In the 1930s, the State Library started to perform more functions than those of a parliamentary library – the collections comprised about 50,000 items and the readership included outstanding intellectuals, cultural and public figures. With the Soviet occupation, the library became a regular public library, known under the name of the State Library of the Estonian SSR. The role of the library changed considerably: all links with foreign countries and their libraries were severed, and Russian publications predominated, mostly consisting of all-Union deposit copies. The bulk of Estonian and foreign publications was placed in restricted access collections. Between 1948 and 1992 the library was housed in the former Estonian Knighthood House in Tallinn's historic centre. 1953, the library was named after Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, a leading man of letters of the Estonian National Awakening and the author of the Estonian national epic, Kalevipoeg. The collections then amounted to one million items already. The liberation movement that began in the Baltic countries in the 1980s and the restoration of the independent Republic of Estonia on August 20, 1991, considerably changed the role of the library. In 1988, the Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald State Library was renamed the National Library of Estonia with a mission to collect, preserve and provide access to all documents published in the Estonian language and in Estonia, and also about or including information on Estonia. In 1989, the library's legal status as a parliamentary library was restored with an obligation to provide information services for the Riigikogu and the Government. The present National Library of Estonia is a legal entity in public law, which operates pursuant to the National Library of Estonia Act, adopted in 1998, and amended in 2002 and 2006, and its Statutes. Its collegial decision-making body is the National Library Board with members appointed by the Riigikogu. Library building The National