Some books will be moved – you may have to wait longer for reservations

A project where some books are moved to new locations on the library shelves will be started in libraries in Helsinki. At the same time, books and other material will receive new labels, which will contain information on which shelf the material belongs to.

Smaller changes will be implemented in Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen.

Customers may experience longer wait times for reservations or difficulties in finding materials on library shelves during the move.

You may, however, still borrow and reserve all library materials as usual.

Staff will help you at the library as always, but the system is also new to the staff. Thank you for your patience while we are getting used to the new system! The objective of the project is to offer better services to customers.

How will the change be made in practice?

New labels will be placed on a total of more than 800,000 books and other pieces of material in different Helmet libraries. The bulk of the work will be carried out in the Helsinki City Library, where approximately 650,000 new labels will need to be affixed.

Not all books will need new labels or new locations. The project will cover materials such as non-fiction, poetry and graphic novels.

In addition to the labelling project, books and other materials will be moved to new shelf locations in Helsinki.

Minor changes may be made to fiction shelf locations in other cities. Most of the material will not need to be moved.

Why is the change made?

The new shelf locations and labels are part of the so-called classification change. The change is made to harmonise the classification system across all public Helmet libraries with the Finnish Public Libraries Classification System, i.e. mark the locations of books similarly in all libraries. This means that Helsinki will start using the same system as the rest of Finland.

When all libraries use the same classification system, cooperation between different Helmet libraries will be improved. In practice, this means that you can get your hands on new books faster than before.

Thus far, the Helsinki City Library has been using its own classification system, which differs somewhat from the system used in other Finnish libraries. The classification used in Helsinki dates back to the 1940s.

Espoo, Kauniainen and Vantaa have used the Helsinki system to classify their fiction. Other material has been classified according to the Finnish Public Libraries Classification System (PLC). Fiction will now also be moved to the classification system used by the rest of Finland.

When will the change be made?

In Espoo, the work will begin in summer 2025.

In Helsinki, the project will be launched in autumn 2025. Implementing the new labels and shelf locations will take less than a year in Helsinki. The project should be complete in spring 2026.

Work carried out in Vantaa and Kauniainen will be announced later when the schedule is specified.