Lithuanian encyclopedias

In 1910, Antanas Olšauskas, a Lithuanian emigrant in Chicago, Illinois, started to assemble an editorial team, but financial constraints and disagreements among the editors resulted in the abandonment of the project in 1912.

In 1929, Spaudos Fondas and Lithuanian Catholic Academy of Sciences separately initiated encyclopedic projects.

Many difficulties ensued, but the booklets finally began monthly publication, and approached the status of a periodic scientific journal.

Nine volumes were published—up to the letter J—and the tenth was underway when in 1944, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania, and its printing was halted.

The undertaking was especially difficult because most of their materials and sources were left behind in Lithuania and were now unavailable—a result of the Iron Curtain.

It is still valuable for scientific topics, but the social science articles were distorted to conform to Soviet propaganda (for example, it portrayed western countries as bourgeois dictatorships).

Between 1985 and 1988, the four-volume Tarybų Lietuvos enciklopedia or TLE, dealing with only Lithuania-related topics, was published.

In 2001, the Science and Encyclopaedia Publishing Institute, based in Vilnius, began the publication of the 25-volume Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija or VLE.