Interlibrary loans

The Interlibrary borrowing service of the National Library of Finland can provide assistance when you need to loan or get copies of materials in other Finnish or international libraries.

Libraries and organisations can order loanable materials or reproductions for their customers through the interlibrary lending.

Service description

Interlibrary borrowing for private customers

At the interlibrary borrowing services of the National Library of Finland, we order loans and reproductions for you from other libraries in Finland or abroad.

We will find the requested material and get a loan or a copy as affordably and quickly as possible. We can also order material owned by the National Library that is at that moment not available.

You can place the order with an electronic order form. You can also submit your order at our customer service point, by phone (tel. +358 2941 22744) or via email nationallibrary@helsinki.fi.

Patrons of the National Library can order materials from the National Repository Library for free. You can place orders by logging in to our search service kansalliskirjasto.finna.fi and using Place the request -button. 

We will send you an arrival notice when the material can be picked up from the library’s customer service point. The interlibrary service fee is paid when picking up the material (see price list for services).

You will get the articles as paper copies. As an exception, the copies from the National Repository Library in Kuopio are sent directly to the customers email. This paperless email delivery was started in 2023 as a pilot program. To use the service you must have a National Library card.

We will automatically renew all interlibrary loans and will notify you when the loan can no longer be renewed.

Interlibrary lending for libraries and organisations

Libraries and organisations can order loanable materials or reproductions for their customers through the interlibrary lending. We only send out loanable materials and some reading room loans.

We do not send out National Collection materials as interlibrary loans but we can make reproductions of them. We will send microfilms of newspapers in the National Collection as reading room loans only when they are unavailable elsewhere.

The National Library of Finland materials can be found at National Library's Search Service:
kansalliskirjasto.finna.fi

Orders are made with an electronic order form.

Interlibrary lending services:
nationallibrary@helsinki.fi

From international libraries, we prefer IFLA voucher payments.

Joining the service

Paid service
Free of charge