National Library of Finland breaking from Helka on 24 Aug 2019

The collections of the National Library of Finland are searchable in the Helka database for the last time on Friday, 23 August 2019. Due to a system switchover, any material included in the National Library collections cannot be searched in the database or borrowed from 24 August to 1 September 2019.

From Monday, 2 September onwards, all loans, reservations, returns and payments related to the National Library can only be completed at the Library or through the National Library Search at kansalliskirjasto.finna.fi. After Friday, 16 August, books from the National Library can no longer be returned to Kaisa House or other Helsinki University Library premises.

Read more about the changes to National Library services on the National Library website.

These changes are connected to a switchover of library systems at both the National Library of Finland and Helsinki University Library in 2019–2020. The change will first take place at the National Library.

National Library leaves Helka behind in August 2019

Helka operates as usual

Helsinki University Library (HULib) and the Helka database will continue normal operations during the interruption at the National Library.

Helka will still house the collections of Helsinki University Library and the Baltic Library, as well as the libraries of the Institute for the Languages of Finland, the Finnish Heritage Agency, the Finnish Literature Society and the Library of the Labour Movement.

Helsinki University Library facilities will provide normal services. The regular opening hours for the academic year 2019–2020, more extensive than the summer opening hours, will come into effect on Monday, 25 August 2019.

Helsinki University Library prepares for a service platform switchover in 2020

In its system procurement, Helsinki University Library is focusing on improving the findability of digital material essential to the academic community of the University of Helsinki. Helka will continue to contain all of the literature included in the requirements of all University of Helsinki degree programmes.

The new service platform, to be introduced at Helsinki University Library in autumn 2020, will provide Helka library customers with a modern platform for searching for and using printed and digital books, journals and articles. At the same time, library staff will be provided with appropriate tools for acquiring and processing digital materials in particular.

 

 

Join Gale Primary Sources workshop Thur 28rd of March and learn to use resources effectively

Magnifying class and a book

Do you want to find more tools to access and analyze the resources offered by the university? Then you are very welcome to join us for the Gale Primary Sources Workshop!

In the workshop, led by Helsinki University’s own Gale Student Ambassador Pauli Kettunen, you will receive a brief introduction into the archives, as well as tips on accessing and using them for your own research.

“Gale’s numerous archives consist of monographs, photographs, and maps, as well as full runs of British and American newspapers, dating from the 18th century up until the present day, a amazing resource when studying languages, social sciences, history, theology… You name it!”

Learn to use Digital Humanities tools of Gale Digital Scholar Lab, which help you to analyze your corpus of documents with visualization tools. There is also time for workshopping your own ideas, asking questions and working together to find out how Gale’s sources could best support you in your work.

You can find the Gale resources here (if you open the link outside Helsinki University network, it requires a log in with your university account).

Time: Thursday, 28 March 2019 at 12:15 – 13:45 PM

Place: Kaisa House, Fabianinkatu 30, Computer lab 5057, 5 th floor

Registration:

a) non-students by e-form

OR

b) students at WebOodi (for University of Helsinki students only). You will find the course by the code 99914 (Advanced information seeking).

Feel free to send questions or potential topics you are interested in discussing already ahead of time, to be incorporated into the workshop, to pauli.s.kettunen (at) helsinki.fi

The workshop is bilingual, English and Finnish.

Welcome!

 

Edited: the time was earlier incorrect. The right time is: 12:15 – 13:45PM.

The FinELib negotiations aim to make research available at affordable prices

Today, researchers, teachers and students at Finnish universities lose access to hundreds of scientific publications as the negotiations between the national FinELib library consortium and scientific publisher Taylor & Francis ended without result. Negotiations with another major international publisher, Wiley, are still ongoing, and access to Wiley journals has been extended until 18 February 2019.

Arja Tuuliniemi, who is in charge of FinELib services, considers the result of the Taylor & Francis negotiations unfortunate. However, the door is open for further negotiations.

“We are ready to continue the negotiations, provided that the publisher sets more reasonable demand”, says Tuuliniemi in the FinELib news release.

Extensive support for FinELib goals

The reason for the difficulties in the negotiations is money. So far, Taylor & Francis has not been willing to compromise on its profitable business model for the benefit of FinELib’s negotiating goals.

FinELib’s goal is an agreement that covers, without any additional charge, authors’ fees (article processing charges, APCs) for open access publishing – in brief: the subscription fees of scholarly journals should cover the APCs. This goal is aimed at curbing ever-increasing costs, and it also aims to transform an unsustainable system into one that is more beneficial to the scientific community.

Similar negotiations are taking place in different countries, and FinELib’s negotiating goals are also in line with the aims of the European Union and the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland. Universities Finland (UNIFI), which represents all 15 Finnish universities in Finland, also supports the FinELib.

“UNIFI considers the continuation of the current subscription agreements to scholarly journals as unsustainable, and is therefore committed to achieve the goal of making publicly funded research openly available through a constructive dialogue with the publishers. The university rectors will participate actively in formulating and executing the negotiation strategy. UNIFI will not recommend the renewal of agreements that fail to meet the aforementioned principles”, states the UNIFI news release of 19 September 2018 (pdf link).

The University of Helsinki also supports the negotiation goals.

“At the University of Helsinki, open science is one of the strategic priorities, and therefore the university fully supports FinELib’s negotiation goals. The offers made by both publishers have so far been unacceptable from the point of view of costs as well as openness”, says Paula Eerola, Vice-Rector of the University of Helsinki, responsible for research and research infrastructures.

Eerola understands the concerns of researchers when access to journals is blocked, but she is convinced that “it is time to shift scientific publishing into a new position”.

“Since the reputation of a scientific journal does not increase or decrease rapidly, it is important to focus the pressure of openness especially on reputable journals and their publishers. The need for this change is recognised globally”, says Eerola.

The library helps researchers, teachers and students

There is, of course, another side to the negotiations: researchers’, teachers’ and students’ access to most of Taylor & Francis’s journals is now blocked – some of the T&F journals are still accessible through old agreements. The Helsinki University Library (HULib) has been preparing for the no deal situation for some time.

“Implementing openness at a reasonable cost serves the interests of the entire academic community. During the transition period, the library wants to help researchers and students to gain access to both new and older scientific articles. We will also report on the progress of the negotiations and develop our guidelines on how to get access to articles”, says Kimmo Tuominen, University Librarian of the Helsinki University Library.

On the HULib website, there is an Alternative Access webpage, which offers tips on how to get access to Taylor & Francis articles that are not available through the Helka service. Alternative Access also provides up to date information on the negotiations. The library will continue to explore various ways to make the necessary articles available.

“In the near future, we will also start using the Get It Now article delivery service (by Copyright Clearance Center), and we hope it will help ease the discovery of articles. We are happy to answer questions from researchers, teachers and students by email, face to face as well as via chat”, says Tuominen.

The easiest way to get in touch with the library is by sending an email to: e-library@helsinki.fi.

Augustine, Virgil and The Apostolic Fathers – Guides to digitized manuscripts

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE is the series of guides collected by the chief information specialist of the library, Matti Myllykoski. Digital manuscripts, sources, databases and links have been collected from the various web sources. Now published guide MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE: The Apostolic Fathers supplements the series of digitized manuscript guides.

The Apostolic Fathers Guide gathers links for example to digitized early Christian manuscripts and it covers the time period which precedes the book printing, up to early renaissance.

Simone Martini, Wikipedia commons

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE -series includes now following guides:

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE series can benefit anyone interested in digital humanities and studying different text editions.

Welcome to browse our all subject guides!

Welcome to Open Science afternoon: Think Corner 24.10. at 12:00-14:00

In Open Science afternoon Finnish research funders discuss about Plan S – an initiative to make full and immediate Open Access to research publications a reality.

At the event University of Helsinki will also reward an open science promoter. The event ends with the sounds of Finnish electronic music combined to Open Science!

Programme and event in Finnish

OPEN ACCESS WEEK 2018

The event is part of the International Open Access Week at the University of Helsinki Library, free of charge and open to everyone.

For more information on events during the International Open Access Week (22.-28.10.2018), visit the library’s Open Access event site.

Library Terminals Enchanced in All Library Locations

All Library Terminals at Helsinki University Library Locations will be renewed on Thursday September 20th.

Kuvituskuva: Uuden Kirjastokioskin ulkoasuThe new library terminals will allow anyone to search books and articles on Helka, and read digital theses from the University of Helsinki on the E-Thesis repository. The library terminals will also provide users with access to the Helka database’s customer functions, such as saving your searches and favourites as well as saving references or forwarding them to an email address.

University of Helsinki students and staff will be able to use the terminals to log in to their personal desktops with their university IDs.

Print with the copy card

Articles, references and extracts of e-books can also be printed on the new terminals. Printing options are limited to double-sided black and white. Each terminal has its own designated printer whose address is readily available in the print menu. The multi-function devices that are used for printing are not always located in close proximity to the terminals. Instructions on where the multi-function device is located can be found near the terminals. Printing requires a Unigrafia copy card which can be purchased from the library’s customer service desk.

In addition to printing, you can also use the terminals to save articles, references and extracts of e-books onto a memory stick.

The library terminals cannot be used for browsing the internet or working on your personal files.

Guest computers to be phased out

The new terminals will replace all older library terminals and guest computers during the 2018 autumn term. This means that users from outside the University will need to use their own devices to work on their personal files or search for information on the internet. The library’s customer service desk will still provide users with login details for accessing the University’s wireless visitor network with their own computers and devices.

Guest computers are being phased out due to a technical change in the University’s network management system. As a result of this change, the network environment for guests will be terminated. This change will also allow the library to focus on its core service for users from outside the University: providing access to scientific information and University of Helsinki theses and dissertations.

To give your feedback on the new library terminals, use the library’s feedback form.

Researcher, send your publications to the library for open archiving

The requested service is now available! You can send your publications to the library for self-archiving. We check publication rights and archive your publications according to the terms of the publisher.  Send your file to openaccess-info@helsinki.fi and include information on where your publication will be published.

Picture: PexelsIf you are uncertain which version of your publication can be archived or when it can be archived, send us all the versions you have. (More information on different versions in Open Access: Self-archiving (Green OA).

The archiving service is available to all University of Helsinki staff and students. If you have any questions about this service, about self-archiving or about open access you can reach us at openaccess-info@helsinki.fi.

Background

  • Eighty-four percent of the researchers who answered the library’s patron survey in the spring 2018 said they would use a self-archiving service if available.
  • According to the University of Helsinki’s principles of open publishing (2017) all publications produced at the university should be archived in the publication archive HELDA. In HELDA the long-term storage and availability of publications are secured.

Additional information: marja.moisio@helsinki.fi

Translation: Monica Allardt

Browse journals – trial use BrowZine

Try BrowZine to find, follow and read your favorite scholarly journals offered by HULib – while discovering new titles along the way.

BrowZine is available from your web browser and as a mobile app for your iOS and Android devices.

BrowZine is on trial until 11.6. and we’d appreciate your feedback on this service. Please, notice that during the trial period the journal collection available in BrowZine is a test collection, search results  may vary.

My Bookshelf is one of our most popular features. With My Bookshelf, you are notified anytime a new article is added to your favorite journals, keeping you up to date with the latest research.

You can send feedback: e-library@helsinki.fi

browzine koekäyttö

Kumpula’s books as a long-term loan on of after April 19th, 2018

As of Thursday, April 19th, you get long-term loans on material from the Kumpula Campus Library.

Due date will be no earlier than September 18th, 2018, when you borrow or renew your loans

  • April 19th onwards for books with a 28-day loan period, and
  • May 3rd onwards for books with a 14-day loan period.

The Kumpula Campus Library will be closed for renovations. The last day the library will be open is Friday May 18th and it will reopen in the beginning of the autumn term in 2018.

More information about the library renovation on the page Kumpula 2018.