The basic idea behind was to become familiar with the Finna discovery platform for Finnish libraries, archives and museums, which enables access to various cultural resources, such as books, articles, photographs and other CHI artefacts, as an inspiration for the similar platform in Serbia, where such a platform is not existing.
7-8 November 2023
During the two days in Finland, I had a unique opportunity to meet the Finnish colleagues and talk about challenges in our libraries to my colleague director Kimmo Touminen. I was privileged to meet Liisa Savolainen, Deputy Director of the NL of Finland, who was my guide through the National Library of Finland.
Erkki Tolonen, Head of Development (Finna), made a presentation of the very significant service, provided by the National Library of Finland. Finna.fi is a search service that collects material from hundreds of Finnish libraries, archives and museums under one roof and provides access to the whole of the Finnish cultural heritage. Johanna Lilja, Director of Services, presented the National Library of Finland digitisation programme. After all I have heard and seen, I could only resume that the National Library of Finland has a very high level of digital maturity.
My visit to Finland included also the visit to the OODI Helsinki Central Library, a branch of Helsinki City Library at the heart of Helsinki. It was extremely interesting to compare the city libraries in Belgrade and Helsinki.
I would highlight some outcomes. As we are considering working on the platform of the digital cultural heritage of Serbia, we will definitely use the good practice of Finna. Also, I arranged the visit of the new Ambassador of the Republic in Serbia in Helsinki to the National Library of Finland with the aim to foster the cultural cooperation between the two countries. In addition, I will work on the adaption of the good practice of crowdsourcing in identification of subjects in digital collection of images, inspired by the National Library of Finland.
