How Helsinki Built ‘Book Heaven’ | Hacker News Reader

How Helsinki Built ‘Book Heaven’

citylab.com

75 pointsjnieminen19 comments

This has reminded me I've not visited my town's municipal libraries in ages!

So, if you care about libraries and literacy as an aspect of society - especially in the face of the world of brief tweets and text messages, and disappearing wall posts - why not...

* Visit your municipality's website (or maybe any search engine)

* Look for a map or list of public libraries around you

* Go visit one and spend some time there - reading or even just tapping away at your laptop

Libraries thrive by attendance after all...

It sounds like a community center, not a library. I’m happy that Helsinki has created a (rather expensive) place where people can work on computers or have meetings - but that doesn’t make it a “book heaven” and it certainly doesn’t help preserve and spread the notion that a book is an inherently valuable thing, one that tends to contain deeper and more insightful knowledge that 99% of the Internet.

Yeah, it actually sucks as a place to read books. Too many tourists and visitors, and too few quiet, comfortable reading spaces. There are much better libraries for such in Helsinki, although some of those good places (eg. smaller Helsinki Uni faculty libraries) have been closed in favour of fancy big "libraries" like this one.

> Yeah, it actually sucks as a place to read books.

I wonder if that means that it has failed to achieve its purpose. Libraries were created in an age where books were scarce and expensive. This isn’t really true anymore, except for science or art books. What has become rare are common social spaces where you are not expected to consume. Churches used to be that, but now they’re empty. What about „libraries“ that focus on the social part, not the storing-paper part? Quiet places to read for people who want to leave their apartment, maybe because they’re lonely. Book clubs with discussions to foster intellectual exchange. The equivalent of the coffee houses old, without the blaring pop music of todays chain stores.

> too few quiet, comfortable reading spaces

Yes. The whole 3rd floor is open plan, so the noise from the kids play area and from the cafe carries over to the books area. And the magazines section is right next the kids play area, so there it's especially not quiet.

Yeah, 100,000 books sounds like a smallish number for a “book heaven”.

I have found interesting books there. I have borrowed and loaned them, read and returned them.

I have also read very interesting magazines while having coffee there.

Sure there will always be some people complaining. By most metrics, Oodi has been a massive success.

If you have some free time and are in the vicinity, it is a great destination.

The whole Töölönlahti bay area is nice. Oodi is a natural starting point for that. You can walk or bike to Kallio and Töölö, both by the way have their own more traditional libraries.

Most tourists tend to instead stay in southern Helsinki which is fine but quite boring in my opinion.

It's actually pretty low on books when it comes to Helsinki Metropolitan Area Libraries.

You can just order a book you want from another library's collection in the metropolitan area and grab it from Oodi. For instance, in Pasila they have over 1.6 million titles [1].

[1] https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsingin_kaupunginkirjasto

Previous discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20809247

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19189631

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17111642

If I could design a library, I would throw out all the books. I would have lots of little rooms instead of open spaces. I would toss out all the uncomfortable designer chairs and put in comfortable and ergonomic seats instead.

It would really be an office instead of a library, but I think this is what people actually want.

So, like WeWork? That's a nice startup idea.

Not really Book Heaven at all. More like Amazing Community Center. You can host lan parties there, use studio grade audio equipment, 3d printers etc. Its quite massive.

More here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20812774

BTW. I think Dang had shadow-banned all Helsinki library computers. Throwaways did not work last time I tried.

The single most thing that a library could do to be of more use to the public is to stock more books, and from that respect, this does not sound that much of a nice place, they could have a lot, lot more books given the space, but they haven't.

But the other facilities are awesome, I take my child there almost every weekend to play in the play-area, read books and generally hang out.

They have board-games, 3d-printers, computers, and lots of things. It is a very social-space, not just a "be quiet and take books".

In my experience, the size of the collection in any given library building is never much of an issue as you can always order books for very low fees from any library in the country. Because of this, the other facilities are a much bigger value-add than a larger on-site collection.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com