Finns are now rushing to the e-library at a daily rate of one thousand inhabitants – and the book collection is also growing fast

According to the National Library of Finland, the amount of material from large publishers in the E-library has increased significantly since the spring. The first year’s target has been reached halfway.

At the turn of the year, the coverage of the e-service increased considerably when 59 municipalities in Lapland, Kainuu and North Ostrobothnia, which had been running their own e-library in the north for three years, joined the national e-library. They brought with them 660 000 potential users of the service. The residents of the North are still served by the Northern eLibrary, although some of the material has been transferred to the national library.

Outside the e-library, there are mainly Swedish-speaking municipalities in Ostrobothnia and Varsinais-Suomi.

Rapidly growing user base and choice

Around 10 000 people took up the national e-library on its first day in the spring, and growth has been fairly steady. Louhisalmi says that the number of registrations has started to increase as the northern municipalities have joined in.

– There are a thousand new users every day. That’s a lot, says Louhisalmi.

During the first couple of weeks, there have been around 7,300 registrations from Lapland, North Ostrobothnia and Kainu.

In the beginning, the service had a few hundred e- and audiobook titles, but the number has already grown to thousands – and a lot of material is added every week. While at the end of November there were about 3,500 titles, now the electronic bookshelf already has a selection of about 5,000 electronic or audio books.

The goal is to have 10,000 titles during the first year of operation, i.e. by the end of April. Overall, the target size of the E-library is around 25,000 titles.

There are currently more than a hundred magazines, and they also have several reading rights.

For municipalities, the cost is 70 cents per inhabitant

The e-library is fully financed by the municipalities. The cost per inhabitant is 0.70 euros.

This year’s budget is around 3.8 million euros. About 2.5 million euros are set aside for materials per year, of which about 70 percent is used for new acquisitions and 30 percent goes to renewing or supplementing licenses. The rest of the budget is spent on personnel expenses and the purchase of services.

The e-library can currently be used on a smartphone or tablet. The next big development target is the computer version.

– This is what many customers have been hoping for, because, for example, reading magazines can be more comfortable on a computer screen, Louhisalmi says.

It is also important for many people to be able to read a physical magazine, so he does not think that library reading rooms or supermarket magazine shelves would be unnecessary.

E-services will not replace printed books – at least not soon

In the National Library, it is estimated that electronic services and printed books support each other and that many people use the services side by side.

– For example, when traveling, it is easier to use an e-service than to lug around ten physical books.

The book industry is going through a strong upheaval as the popularity of audiobooks grows, but at least for now, according to Louhisalmi, there are no indications that libraries are reducing the purchase of printed materials due to e-materials.

In Louhisalmi’s opinion, the e-service offered by libraries also does not compete with commercial operators.

– We operate with library logic, we always have a limited selection and a limited number of access rights. Even in the e-library, you have to reserve and queue for popular books.