Radical change
The late 1990s brought profound change.
Developments in information technology
radically altered the libraries’
working environment, their tools and
their views of what their work was all
about. The coincident economic recession
led to drastic measures to cut municipal
costs. The physical library network
shrank; branches were closed and
book mobiles taken off the road. In
1990 Finland had 1,151 libraries, in
2000 there were just 936. In the same
period, mobile library numbers fell
from 232 to 202. Simultaneously, library
usage soared and visitor numbers
rose by 31% over the decade. Lending
and the frequency of library visits have
always been high in Finland; the average
Finn now visits a library 12 times,
and borrows 20 items, every year.
So, despite inexorable cuts in funding,
libraries faced growing demand for
their services. They were still working
out how best to use their resources to
resolve this dilemma when along came
the great computer breakthrough. And
that brought with it so much more
than automation of lending routines.
Though at first marketed as an aid to
rationalisation and getting by with less
staff – and certainly a better means of
handling the library’s collections too –
it proved to be a gateway to totally new
opportunities for information seeking,
communication, connections and service.
It also brought with it new tasks
and routines, and the need for a new
approach to the operation as a whole.
Expertise and collaboration
The technical infrastructure for network
connections in Finnish public libraries
was created with state funding
during the latter part of the 1990s. The
project called House of Knowledge –
now publiclibraries.fi – developed, coordinated
and handled the follow-up
on a national level and established a
trilingual website for the public libraries,
as well as a bulletin board for library
staff and other interested parties.
Provincial libraries were able to employ
experts on networks to advise and train
staff within the region. All libraries got
internet connections, as well as further
training in the use of these new tools
and ways of communication. The bulletin
board and the growth of e-mail
made it easy to spread information, to
keep in touch and to co-operate.
Today more than half of all Finnish libraries
belong to a regional network.
Usually this involves sharing a home
page, with catalogues available over the
Internet, joint library cards and common
internal lending rules.A management
group comprising the heads of
the participating libraries is responsible
for developing the network.On top of
labour and cost savings, regular exchange
of know-how and experience,
bigger collections and better service for
the users, this arrangement offers mutual
support for the heads of individual
libraries for planning and developing
both local and regional library activities.
Each library pays a proportion of
the costs.
On a municipal level this co-operation
so far has mostly concerned the mobile
library service. The new Library Act
stipulates that a municipality must
provide these services independently,
or totally or partially in co-operation
with other municipalities, or in any
other way. Today some municipalities
are planning to share the services of a
chief librarian, while others have already
established a joint administration.
Developments on the web
Since 2000, libraries have been able to
apply for public money to produce
contents for the web and to develop
user-friendly services,though many libraries
have no doubt produced contents
long before that word got new
meaning in the new context. In addition
to library information and catalogue
metadata, people have worked to
create link libraries, regional directories
of authors, reference databases of articles
in local newspapers, pages for children
and youngsters, and literary pages.
The projects have now grown bigger.
Provincial libraries in Ostrobothnia are
building regional portals with a varied
content of knowledge and culture,and
are offering web-space to other regional
producers of contents within these
fields. The regional library networks
are jointly applying for project money
to develop their service for specific age
groups, for developing user-friendliness,
for making special collections
more accessible and for joint projects
with, for instance, municipal authorities,
schools and other educational institutions,
museums, local archives and
music schools.
Many libraries participate in the work
by producing links for the link library
on the joint website publiclibraries.fi,
and a great number of libraries contribute
to the Ask-a-Librarian service introduced
by publiclibraries.fi.A library’s
size or location matters less now
than it used to.What is important in
this electronic era is having an innovative
outlook and shared interests and
needs.
Through their network connections libraries
have also acquired new roles;
activities now include a certain amount
of production,and the Internet makes
quality evaluation ever more important.
Whatever libraries produce for the
web is publicly available, and can be
accessed from one’s home computer.
From home it is also possible to reserve
a book that is currently out on loan to
someone else, and eventually get a
message on one’s mobile phone saying
that it can now be picked up from the
library. The book,the physical object, is
transported, collected, carried home. In
Finland, books constitute 91% of the
collections of public libraries, 80% of
acquisitions and 76% of lending. For
research libraries books make up 50%
of acquisitions.
Merging new and old
Public libraries are developing collections
and services in electronic format,
but also have responsibility for providing
fiction,cultural heritage, popular
non-fiction, literature for children
and youngsters and picture books. The
merging of new and traditional roles is
perhaps most visible on libraries’ fiction
pages on the web. Libraries are cultural
meeting places, on the web as well
as in the cityscape or village.One such
meeting place is MCL, the multicultural
library on the web.
The public and research libraries are
working together around new meeting
places and creating networks on many
different levels. The physical space can
be shared, as it is in Kokkola, where the
Polytechnic Library and the City/Provincial
Library are situated in the same
new building. (The library in Kokkola
in described in the recently published
book Nordic Public Libraries. The Nordic
cultural sphere and its public libraries).
Another good example of shared
physical facilities is one o f the branches
of Helsinki City Library joining forces
with Helsinki University in creating
Viikki Information Centre.
In Swedish-speaking Ekenäs the City
Library has responsibility for the library
and information function of a regional
polytechnic. Many of the regional
library networks collaborate with polytechnics
and universities in their area,
via joint virtual libraries and websites.
Sukkula’s virtual library includes museums,
archives and dozens of public and
research libraries in western Finland;
Eastinfo is an equivalent big network in
eastern Finland. The Finnish National
Electronic Library, FinElib, negotiates
certain licenses also for public libraries.
What of the future?
The process continues. The local physical
networks with main library and
branches, mobile library and lending
stations have shrunk, the regional virtual
networks are growing and developing
and new virtual libraries are
being created. On the national level,
plans concern big networks and cooperation
across boundaries. The Finnish
Library Policy Programme published
in the spring of 2001 includes a
vision for the development of library
and information services that focuses
on collaboration and a clearer division
of labour between the big three – Central
Library for Public Libraries, National
Repository Library and National
Library. The first discussions about
possible future co-operation have already
taken place, but where will they
lead? Only time will tell.
Kokkola Library:Polytechnic Library and City/Provincial Library in the same new building
Barbro
Wigell-Ryynänen
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