Library Director's review: Looking into the future!
Helsinki City Library celebrated its 150th anniversary during the year under review. The anni-versary celebrations lasted from the beginning of February until Aleksis Kivi Day. The role of customers, decision-makers, partners and staff was appreciated in the anniversary program.
It is an honour to be one of the oldest departments in the City of Helsinki and among the oldest public libraries in Finland. This also makes you think. The library was needed as far back as 150 years ago and it is still alive and kicking!
Library services rest on a solid foundation made of a library network that has grown into 36 libraries with the development of the City of Helsinki, professional staff, and a constantly renew-ing collection acquired in the course of decades. A library collection with the largest number of books is a unique treasure that today could not be acquired with any amount of money.
The library owes its success to its users. Helsinki residents appreciate their library, which shows in the popularity of library services. During the year under review, the number of loans and cus-tomer visits only fell by one per cent from the previous year. The decrease is due to the fact that many libraries (Kannelmäki, Kallio and Oulunkylä libraries, Library 10) were closed for some time for renovation.
To the delight of customers and to increase the utilisation rate of library facilities further, opening hours were extended in many libraries by already opening them at 9 a.m. Library facilities are in fact used for a variety of purposes. Libraries are more often used as a study for reading, studying and working alone or in groups. According to statistics, five percent of library card holders do not borrow items, but use ASKO customer PCs.
Library facilities were developed extensively during the year. An in-depth, far-reaching reform was the adoption of a new operations model, or concept, covering the areas of facility, service and communication. The completely refurbished Oulunkylä Library, which was reopened in December, is the first example of the new concept. The aim of the reform is to take different customer groups better into consideration, improve the display arrangements of books and other items, make the services easier to use, and increase overall comfortability with appealing interior decoration materials.
Library facilities close to residents also provide a natural setting for arranging different types of events. A wealth of programme activities was arranged in libraries during the year.
The number of online visits, which had earlier shown strong growth, became steady and is now only slightly higher than the number of customer visits. The most widely used online service was HelMet, a joint service for the libraries in the metropolitan area. According to an external survey, HelMet was ranked the most recommended online brand in Finland. The intention is to make the service even more customer-friendly and versatile. With this in mind, work was launched during the year to develop the HelMet service site.
A record high amount of material was acquired during the year. No breakthrough was seen for e-books yet, as new Finnish literature is not available to libraries. Instead, the library acquired a small number of e-book readers, onto which non-copyrighted material has been downloaded.
Innovative ideas are being created through concrete projects of topical interest and by looking far enough into the future. The project plan for the Central Library, which has been scheduled for opening in 2017, was completed in spring. The library will also offer new digital services, for which a survey was commissioned from an external party. The intention is to test the services in the existing libraries. The aim is also to open new types of learning environments, for example, in the near future.
An important part of the ongoing reform is the Kirjastot.fi website, which serves all the libraries in Finland. The website is financed by the Ministry of Education and Culture and administered by Helsinki City Library. The most visible and audible new development was the library web TV and radio Kirjastokaista.fi.
The year was financially tougher than last year, but the situation still remained in balance. The library obtained more external project funding than in the previous year.
An effort uniting all the libraries in Finland will be the IFLA, the largest conference in the library sector, which that will be arranged in Helsinki in 2012. In the conference, Finnish libraries are challenged to show that they are among the best libraries in the world. A national committee is responsible for the conference preparations together with IFLA.
The City Library has also actively introduced ideas for events to be arranged in the World De-sign Capital 2012 year and is prepared to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the declaration of Helsinki as the capital of Finland in 2012.
”Eteenpäin elävän mieli” (Looking into the future) is a Finnish proverb that well describes the spirit in Helsinki City Library, and particularly that of its users. With this in mind, we are happy to accept the task that the National Branding Task Force
of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has assigned to libraries, entitled ”Make Yourself Necessary in the Finland of 2020s”. According to the task force ”Publicly funded common living rooms are still needed in Finland for spending time, meeting people and enjoying cultural pastimes”.
Future cannot be made through talk but by doing things. The City Library and its staff are ready to create the future to ensure that in 2035, the library can celebrate its 175th anniversary as merrily as it did its 150th anniversary in 2010!
Maija Berndtson
Library Director