Helsinki City Library

Finland

Contact 

Kristina Virtanen

www.lib.hel.fi

Helsinki City Library is the largest public library in Finland, the home library for the 559 000 residents of Helsinki. Helsinki City library has 36 libraries, two mobile libraries, 11 institutional libraries, one newspaper reading room, home library service, meetingpoint@lasipalatsi and a virtual library at www.lib.hel.fi/en-GB.

The population of Helsinki is 559,718 of whom 251,378 (44,9 % of the total population) are registered library members. The total stock is 2 million items including 207,179 items of audiovisual material. Use of the library is free of charge. The total loans are 9.8 million and the number of visits is 7.7 million, the number of virtual visits is 19.6 million. The library employs 508 people.

Helsinki City Library also has a national role. It functions as the central library for public libraries, whose tasks are defined in the Library Decree. The central library’s tasks extended to cover the joint network services for Finland´s public libraries when the national House of Knowledge project, now called Networked Public Libraries Services, was transferred to Helsinki City Library. The project, which is financed by the Ministry of Education, promotes Internet use in public libraries and enables both library staff and customers to function in today's increasingly network-oriented world. Both as a service and as a mode of cooperation between libraries, Networked Public Libraries Services, www.libraries.fi, is an internationally unique initiative.

Helsinki City Library also serves as a multilingual library which offers library services to the linguistic minorities in Finland. The virtual form of this is MCL (Multicultural Library) which is a service in the Internet tailored to foreigners. http://www.lib.hel.fi/en-GB/monikielinenkirjasto/

During the past few years, Helsinki City Library has responded actively to the challenges of the Information Society. Cable Book Library which was opened in 1994, specialized in the use of information technology and has played a pivotal role in pioneering network services not only in Helsinki libraries, but also for other Finnish and European public libraries. Cable Book Library is in a way still alive today, Library 10 and meetingpoint@lasipalatsi are its successors and are specialized in the use of information technology.

Most of the branches of the Helsinki City Library conduct some form of user education. The user education is diverse and targeted at several user groups. As a member of the HelMet Library, Helsinki City Library naturally co-operates with the other city libraries in the Helsinki metropolitan area. Together we organize staff training and also share ideas, materials and teaching methods.

The main policies for co-operation between schools and libraries are drawn up together with the City of Helsinki Education Department and we are also planning a joint curricula for reading promotion and education on library use and information literacy.

Helsinki City Library participates in international projects e.g. as a Centre of Excellence, organising training and study tours for librarians from across Europe. Staff members also frequently lecture at seminars and other events abroad. The City Library receives many visitors from libraries around the world. Helsinki City Library is also participates in
PULMAN - Public Libraries Mobilising Advanced Networks and is a member in the EU-projects CALIMERA and PuLLS.

In 2000 Helsinki City Library received the Access to Learning Award the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and in 2008 the Finnish Quality Award in the category for the public sector and non-profit communities. The city library unit, Library 10, in turn, rose to first place in the Quality Innovation of the Year competition.