Nelli - contemporary library services
The Finnish Nelli-portal gives access to
material on research and higher education.
The new portal was inaugurated
for the use of university library users
on 15. September 2004, while libraries
at polytechnics and public libraries are
given access later on.
Helsinki University Library and the
National Library have developed Nelli
in cooperation with the university library
network, and the portal offers
contents and tools for information retrieval
and for searching many databases
simultaneously. There are possibilities
for tailored and personalised services.
Nelli is one of the corner stones of
the national open-for-all portal to
come.
Logistics in libraries
Virtual libraries and virtual services are
developing, but due to easy access to
catalogues and collections on the web,
and to the fact that 80% of Finnish libraries
belong to some library network
with joint catalogues on the web, the
problem with moving books around
fast and with as low costs as possible
has became crucial. The Lappish Rekku-
system, once a pilot project financed
by the Ministry of Education, was
presented in a report a couple of years
ago, and was mostly about transporting
books within a certain area. The new
report, Solutions to logistics of the libraries
of tomorrow (only available in
Finnish), presented to the Minister of
Culture Tanja Karpela on the 28. September
2004 was initiated by the Ministry
of Transport and Communication
and the Ministry of Education and carried
out by two consulting companies.
The report offers interesting solutions
to the logistics problem by use of new
technology - there is much more than
mere transport to be looked at - and
presents a pilot project in the capital
area of Finland with 86 library units in
close cooperation.
