Control system for shared library services
The National Library of Finland provides national infrastructure services to the library network, in particular, but also to other organisations. The control system for national services offers these organisations an opportunity to participate in developing the services and the decision-making process pertaining to them. The control system determines the roles of all the parties, reinforcing the interaction between the steering and specialist groups. The central goal is to promote internal coordination of the services and transparency of the operations. The control system is one of the central forms of network cooperation and channels of interaction between the National Library and the library network.
Sector meetings
Regular sector meetings are a cooperative tool between the National Library and the customer libraries, which are represented by the presidents and secretaries of the library sectors' councils.
The Council for Finnish University Libraries
The Council for Finnish University Libraries is a body coordinating and developing the cooperation of the network of university libraries, which has representatives from all the university libraries, the National Library of Finland and the National Repository Library of Finland.
AMKIT consortium
Universities of applied sciences library project consortia (AMKIT) coordinates the cooperation between libraries of universities of applied sciences.
The Council for Public Libraries
The Council for Public Libraries is a body coordinating the cooperation of public libraries, which also represents the public libraries in the library network cooperation.
The Council for the Special Libraries
Special libraries form the Network of Special Libraries and Information Services, which annually selects the Council for the Special Libraries with at least 10 members from among its members. The Council for the Special Libraries (EriK) coordinates the cooperation of the special library branch and acts as the representative of the special libraries in matters concerning their views and needs.
Service consortia
FinELib
The Finnish National Electronic Library, FinELib is a consortium of Finnish universities, universities of applied sciences, research institutes and public libraries. FinELib acquires international and Finnish materials in a competitive manner, ensures the availability of high-quality, diverse e-materials and promotes their use in research, education, learning and general acquisition of knowledge.
FinELib negotiates user licenses for electronic materials for it member organisations in a centralised manner. The operations are based on national and international cooperation and constant development.
Further information about the FinELib consortium (kiwi.fi)
Linnea2
The Linnea2 consortium is a coalition formed in 2000 by the Finnish universities, the Library of Parliament and the National Repository Library, the purpose of which is to manage the shared library system of the member organisations. This system consists of Voyager and Aleph software, a server owned and maintained by CSC as well as a user service. The system helps to maintain the library databases and also the national databases and Union Catalogues of the National Library of Finland.
Steering groups
The National Library of Finland has established three advisory boards – the Steering Group of the Slavonic Library, the Steering Group of the Humanities and the Steering Group of the Digital Humanities – to develop services in cooperation with research communities.
The Steering Group of the Humanities was established in 2013 following a board decision. The duty of the Steering Group is to reinforce the interaction between the library and the research communities. The objective is to develop the library and its services so that they are as relevant to research and education as possible. The Steering Group aims to influence the accessibility policies of research information and materials of the humanities also on a national scale. The Steering Group has representatives from university education and research of the humanities from all over Finland.
The Steering Group of the Slavonic Library was founded in 2004. The purpose of the Steering Group is to promote the cooperation between the Slavonic Library and the related research institutes and subjects. The aim is to support the collection and acquisition policy guidelines of the Slavonic Library and the development of its services as well as facilitate the development of the field's research conditions. The members of the Steering Group are representatives from research institutes and subjects related to the Slavonic Library.
The Steering Group of the Digital Humanities began to operate in early 2019. Its duties include monitoring the implementation of the National Library’s digital humanities policy and, if necessary, commenting on the policy guidelines. In addition, the group assesses the compatibility of the National Library’s data services with the methods of digital humanities, and discusses the distribution of duties with organisations belonging to the group to avoid overlaps. The group follows the latest phenomena in the research field and provides related information to the National Library’s specialists.
Other national collaboration
Committee on information services and management
A number of applications are currently used within the environment for digital library services. Several standards are needed for both general use and the library sector to be able to efficiently transfer documents, including their metadata, from one system to another.
The National Library of Finland chairs the committee on information services and management under the Finnish Standards Association, which coordinates Finnish efforts to develop ISO standards in the information services sector and is responsible for having such standards translated into Finnish.
Wiki site of the committee on information services and management (in Finnish)
The Kotoistus project
The Kotoistus project aims to ensure that information systems can be used in Finland in all of the country’s languages.
The project issues instructions and rules on language and culture which companies and other software and service developers can apply. The project is responsible for Finland’s participation in the Unicode Consortium. In addition, it raises awareness about its rules and ensures their correct application. Instructions prepared in the project are also widely applied in library systems.
Website of the Kotoistus project (in Finnish)
KATVE, the National Library working group on networking standards
KATVE, the National Library working group on networking standards, issues instructions for the national application of networking standards.
International cooperation
The National Library of Finland participates actively in the international networks of the library field. We share openly our expertise through the cooperation forums in order to, for example, develop electronic environments.
We participate in many EU projects, recording European culture heritage into a digital format. This way, we, in part, promote the citizens' possibilities to learn more about the world's treasures of culture history.
The library has representatives in six different sections of IFLA. The library is a very active participant in international development communities of open source code and metadata. The library transfers national, digitalised materials to Europeana and World Digital Library. It takes actively part in both national and international operations promoting the copyright matters of libraries and other memory organisations.
The National Library of Finland works actively together with the following central organisations of library field:
- Bibliotheca Baltica - Cooperation body of the libraries in the Baltic Countries
- CDNL - Conference of Directors of National Libraries – Cooperation body of the Directors of world's national libraries
- CENL - Conference of European National Librarians – Cooperation body of the Directors of Europe's national libraries
- CERL - Consortium of European Research Libraries
- IIPC - International Internet preservation Consortium
- IFLA - The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions - – Global organisation of the library field
- LIBER - Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries
- MinervaEC - Ministerial Network for Valorising
- NORON - Cooperation body of Directors of Nordic state and national libraries
- OCLC - Online Computer Library Consortium
- SVUC - Scandinavian Virtual Union Catalogue – Cooperation body for the Nordic union catalogues
- The European Library - Shared portal of European national libraries