Representatives of the City of Helsinki visited the Shanghai Library on September 7 to jointly stage the ‘Shanghai-Helsinki Seminar on the Libraries’, an event both the parties had been preparing for nearly two months. The visit also aimed to tap into the full cooperation potential for many projects, in particular the digital library solutions and the ‘Window of Shanghai’.

The Helsinki City Delegation, led by Ms. Tuula Haatainen, the Deputy Mayor of Helsinki responsible for Education, Culture and Human Resource for the Public Employees, included Ms. Maija Berndtson, the Library Director of the Helsinki City Library; Ms. Leena Mickwitz, the senior advisor to Ms. Tuula Haatainen; Ms. Pirjo Lipasti, the Project Planner for planning operations of the New Helsinki Central Library; Ms. Päivi Litmanen-Peitsala, the communication designer of the Library.fi project (the national online service for libraries); Mr. Kari Lämsä, the manager of Library 10 and Meetingpoint, the two development centers for Helsinki City Library’s new physical and digital services; Mr. Klaus Oesch, the Program Manager for TEKES (the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation) and the advisor to the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry; Mr. Matti Sarmela, the Service Manager for Libraries.fi online services; Ms. Anna-Maria Soininvaara, the Deputy Director of Helsinki City Library and her colleague Mr. Mikko Vainio, another Deputy Director of HCL.

The seminar, featuring 7 presentations in series, commenced on 13.30hr in the Room A3 on the third floor of Shanghai Library. Speeches from the Suomi librarians gave a wide coverage of the facts & figures of the public libraries in Finland – the profile of the 150-year old Helsinki City Library and its new Central Library project to be completed in 2017, the overview of the Finnish National Digital Library, the success stories of ‘Library 10’ and the ‘Meetingpoint’ that encourages participation and creates communal meeting place, the challenge posed by the rising of digital reading and the growing number of e-contents, and the librarianship in a knowledge society.

In between were presentations made by two Shanghai Library staff, Ms. ZHOU Yuhong of the Infolib Group and Ms. YANG Jia with the IT Department, who recounted the Library’s plan of building a new operation as the city’s second comprehensive library at the municipal level, and the mobile and digital library services made available by the Shanghai Library to its patrons.

Discussions were raised around such topics as the extensive use of RFID, development of middleware for digital library application as well as the scope that the mobile services reach out.

The seminar was ended with ‘The Day with the Library’, a promotional footage that the Shanghai Library tailored for the 77th IFLA Congress to publicize its unremitting efforts of improving service quality and user experience through new technologies.

Founded in 1850, the Helsinki City Library is the largest public library in Finland and also serves as the Central Library for Public Libraries in Finland. The New Helsinki Central Library will be opened in 2017 when Finland celebrates the 100th independence anniversary.

All the presentations of the seminar are now online available. See here for the seminar agenda and the PDFised presentations.