Reading room loans

The collections of the National Library feature a great deal of material that can only be released for reading room use. This means that the material cannot be taken away from the Library, and must be studied on the premises. To make an order for a reading room loan, you must have a valid National Library card.

Reading rooms in the National Library’s main building:

  • The General Reading Room is intended for researchers. Some of its researcher desks can be booked for six months at a time. Here visitors can examine such reading room material which has not been restricted for use in other reading rooms – primarily meaning works in the research collection, the open collection and the reference collection
  • The North Hall houses microfilm readers and workstations for digitised resources as well as the researcher shelves. Microfilmed newspapers ordered in advance as well as printed resources ordered by researchers with researcher shelf agreements are deposited on these shelves.
  • More reading desks are available in the upper floors of the Rotunda as well as the Aquarium, a mixed-purpose collections and reading facility along the corridor connecting the main building to Fabiania.

Reading rooms on the ground floor of the National Library’s Fabiania building:

  • The special collections reading room houses paper resources ordered from the National Collection as well as separately ordered works from the Library’s special collections, manuscript collections, the map collection, the newspaper collection as well as the older collections of the Slavonic Library.
  • Material ordered from the storage of the Slavonic Library is delivered primarily to the reading room of the Slavonic Library.
  • Recordings ordered from the Music Library will be delivered to the listening room of the Music Library in a digitised format.

An order form is required for all reading room loans. Delivery times vary by collection. Visitors travelling from further away should ensure that the material they ordered will be available at the Library at the time of their visit.

The National Collection (Fennica Collection)

The materials in the National Collection are granted for reading room use only. The materials you request will be delivered to Special Collections Reading Room.

Request the materials from the National Library search service.

The Humanities Collection

Materials from the Humanities Collection printed before 1900 will be delivered to the Rotunda. The loan period is four weeks.

Materials from the Humanities Collection printed before 1800 will be delivered to the Special Collections Reading Room.

Materials of the Slavonic Library

The materials in the Slavonic Library will be delivered mainly to the Slavonic Library reading room. Some of the materials will be delivered to the Special Collections Reading Room. Materials printed before 1800 will be delivered to the Special Collections Reading Room. Books that have been published before year 1950 will be delivered only as reading room loans.

The loan period is four weeks.

Special Collections

The materials from the Special Collections will be delivered to the Special Collections Reading Room.

The loan period is four weeks.

The Manuscript Collection

The materials from the Manuscript Collection will be delivered to the Special Collections Reading Room.

The loan period is four weeks.