The Helsinki University Library contains both electronic and printed material, such as

• course literature
• research literature
• journals and series
• theses (master’s, doctoral and others)
• databases

Helka Search

You can search for books, journals, articles, theses and databases via Helka database. You can write into the Helka search box for example the name of the book or author name, journal name, the name of database, or keywords and subject headings.

You can use Helka to search for most of the materials obtained by the University of Helsinki. In the Helka database, you can also find material from other Helka libraries outside the university. The National Library has its own search service.

Watch a video on finding sources in Helka. You can select subtitles for the video in the settings at the bottom of the video. Duration of video 5 min 23 sec.

Searching other databases

You will not find all the materials through the Helka search. For example, Finnish articles and materials of the National Library can be found through the national Finna service, which contains materials of Finnish libraries, museums and archives. If you are searching for Finnish articles on health sciences, we recommend the Medic database.

For extensive searches, you will need discipline-specific databases (such as Scopus, Eric, Medline). This enables you to use the search features of various databases.

Examples of databases available to you:

• BrowZine – service to browse electronic journals.
• HELDA – Digital Repository of the University of Helsinki – contains e.g. research articles, theses and textbooks.
• The National Library search 
• MOT Kielipalvelu ® – a set of dictionaries in different languages and specialized areas.
• Scopus – an international multidisciplinary database
• Medline – International reference database for medical sciences 
• Medic – a Finnish reference database of health sciences
• Eric – international database of educational science
• Web of Science – international multidisciplinary database

You can also find books from:

• Public libraries (such as HelMet, the shared database for city libraries in Espoo, Helsinki, Kauniainen and Vantaa)
• The National Library, public libraries and libraries of other Finnish universities using the same search (Finna.fi)
• Collections of other libraries (Libraries.fi)

Use discipline-specific guides to find out which databases are suitable for your topic. Using the links in guides you can proceed to the original search view of the database, which lets you perform advanced information searches.

If you cannot find the publication you need in your studies at the Helsinki University Library (or another library in the Helsinki metropolitan area), you can order books or copies of articles from other libraries via the interlibrary loan service. The interlibrary loans are subject to a charge, with the exception of publications ordered from the National Repository Library.

Read more:
–More instructions for information seeking using Helka (library’s Helka guide)
–The interlibrary loan service and how to order material (Helsinki University Library website)