Creating digital inclusive environements

1. European Congress on E-inclusion:
ECEI09 - Technology and Beyond
in Public Libraries
Creating inclusive digital environments
Brussels, 22-23 October 2009
Maija Berndtson
Library Director
Helsinki City Library

2. Paul Otlet – a Visionary
• We need visions
• The role of public libraries
• From hybrid to boundless
library
• An example of new service
• Ideas for implementation

3. The World City – a Utopian Vision
• In 1910, Otlet and La
Fontaine first
envisioned a "city of
knowledge", which Otlet
originally named the
"Palais Mondial" ("World
Palace"), that would
serve as a central
repository for the
world's information.

4. The World City – a utopian vision
• A city, which like a universal
exhibition brings together all the
leading institutions of the world
and would radiate knowledge,
construct peace, universal
cooperation.
• The design of a Mundaneum (1928)
and a World City (1929) by Le
Corbusier in Geneva next to the
palace of the League of Nations.

5. Prescient of the World Wide Web
• Otlet's writings = prescient of the
current World Wide Web.
• His vision of a great network of
knowledge was centered on
documents and included the
notions of hyperlinks, search
engines, remote access, and social
networks—although these notions
were described by different
names.

6. The nature of the new world that was in
the making
• How knowledge might be mobilised
to manage social change more
effectively than in the past.
• To assemble and interrelate all
documents in their various
formats.
• The objective was universality.
The library, the museum and the
archive were all to be seen as
aspects of a single documentary
organisation.

7. The Mundaneum
• The interlinking that was necessary
had to be centralised in a
hierarchical arrangement.
• In a great world palace, the
Mundaneum, would be located the
nerve center for managing
knowledge acquisition and
dissemination on a global scale.
• A world city representing
symbolically a new polity in which
international relations of all kinds
could be rationally ordered for the
benefit of mankind.

8. The Mundaneum
• The Mundaneum, he tells us, is an
idea of universalism. It is an
institution in which is brought
together “the museum for seeing,
the cinema for viewing, the library,
encyclopedias and archives for
reading, the catalogue for
consulting, the lecture, radio and
the disc for listening, and the
conference for debating
Knowledge organisation and a new world polity: the
rise and fall and rise of the ideas of Paul Otlet, By
W. Boyd Rayward*

9. The Ubiquitous Society
Connects everyone and everything.
Easy connection to networks ”anytime, anywhere, by anything
and anyone”. A society where ICT will be everywhere in daily
life and can easily be used.
Person to Person plus Person to Goods, and Goods to Goods. In
every aspect, communication will play an even more important
role.
Creation of vitality of the individual, vitalize the society.
Based on users’ viewpoints.
Close to the user.
Users can be suppliers too, ”prosumers”.

10. Library – a space for democracy
- Non-commercial meeting
place
- For all – for free
- Versatility of medias
- To meet like-minded
- Supermarket of
knowledge

11. Library – a space for culture
- Individual’s development;
individual needs as
starting point
- Abilities: literacy, it-literacy,
media-literacy
- Economical development
- Social development, for
example energy, consumption,
environment

12. Library – a space for learning
- Identity - local, regional,
national, international
- Forms of culture/ means
of expression
- Word, image, sound
- Meetingplace/
interaction

13. Helsinki City Library
Vision 2000 - 2005
The whole nation’s
‘hybrid library’,
serving locally, acting
nationally, esteemed
internationally.

14. Library’s webpages
Hybrid library: www.lib.hel.fi
VÉÄÄxvà|ÉÇ S S
Ask Online h h
http://www.li e VÉÄÄxvà|ÉÇ e
b.hel.fi l l
/sv-
/sv-FI/kysy/
v v
e e VÉÄÄxvà|ÉÇ
s s
DVD
Magazines
Libraries.fi Workstations
- contains Reading places
information
about Finnish Workstations
Self-
Self-
libraries and
the Finnish service
library system
HelMet – iGS - Information
weblibrary Gas Station
www.helmet.fi http://igs.kirjastot.fi/sv-
http://igs.kirjastot.fi/sv-
FI/iGS/

15. Loans, visits and virtual visits 1985-2008
Lainaus, fyysiset käynnit ja verkkokäynnit 1985-2008
loans
lainaus visits
kirjastokäynnit
käynnit
verkkokäynnit
virtual visits
10 000 000 10 000 000
8 000 000 8 000 000
6 000 000 6 000 000
4 000 000 4 000 000
2 000 000 2 000 000
0 0
1985
1990
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
1985 1996 2005 2007 2008 -/+ 2007-2008
Loans 6 016 577 9 004 437 10 073 766 9 601 730 9 398 909 -2,1 %
Visits 3 991 909 6 536 603 6 604 849 6 388 564 6 418 060 +0,4 %
Virtual visits 180 233 5 012 505 6 435 666 6 631 318 +3,0 %

16. Library

17. Helsinki City Library
Vision 2005 -
The boundless library –
a source of
enlightenment
and
inspiration
throughout your life.

18. Google Book Search,
http://books.google.com/

19. The eBook Store from Sony,
http://ebookstore.sony.com/

20. The World Digital Library
http://www.wdl.org/en

21. https://www.spotify.com/en/

22. Boundless Library: The digital
Visibility, library ”in
to meet the your pecket”
customers Stage
Soft and
Workstations comfortable
seats
Learning enviroment Guidance
Void
The boundless Experiences,
encounters
library
Self-service Content
Photo: Anish Kapoor

23. Information Gas Station iGS
On the web
On the road
On air

24. • Answers, guidance and
entertainment
• Treshold to participation
as low as possible
• Customers participate in
creating the content
• Promoting library
materials and personnels
expertise

25. iGS on the road: The Information barrel
• Fast and flexible touring
• Designed to function in
various conditions
• The Barrel has visited
shopping malls, festivals,
fairs, schools etc.

26. iGS on air – “Ask anything”
• Co-operation with
Finnish Broadcasting
Company
• Question of the week -
answer given in live radio
programme
• Over 70 000 listeners
• Entertaining
• Co-operation, not
marketing
• Teaching and ”librarish”
elements are hidden

27. - Citizen´s
special adviser
• Library goes where the people
are
• Reaching the non-users
• Library 2.0 extending beyond
web services and use of new
applications
• Using all three iGS ”products”
to market library services
• Enhancing information seeking
skills of the whole staff

28. What kind of libraries do we create?
Physical Virtual
Information Gas Station
• Answers to approximately
10 000 questions yearly
• Visits to IGS-webpages
Kallio Library 800 000
• Answers to approximately 6 - more than in any branch
600 questions yearly library
• Libraryvisits 434 424 • Collection: archive with 50
(year 2008) 000 answers
• Collection: 96 049 • Staff: approximately 50
• Staff: 28 people in 20 libraries

29. Teemu Arina
http://tarina.blogging.fi/

30. 1. The changing role of the customer
• Focus on the end-user and customer experience, not
just the information.
• Look into mass-customization: how to customize the
library experience to each individual regarding
recommendations etc.
• Involve the net generation or experts from outside
your own field for rethinking the justification for
your existence.

31. 2. Use new technology and work innovatively
• Look beyond first hand metadata, to second party recommendations and
third-party metadata.
• Utilize open data more, build interfaces for people to do mashups with.
• Build mobile applications to locate books and get instant social navigation to
library books on-location and online.
• Look at QR-codes or similar cheap technologies and stamp them into every
book for contextual information.
• Look into user-generated taxonomies (folksonomies), information
visualization and new ways for “putting the same book in multiple shelves”.
• What augmented reality applications could libraries develop/use?
• Stop watching TV and work on (the next) wikipedia.

32. 3. See beyond the existing
• Transform the library facility to something that encourages participation or
new reasons to go to a library.
• Understand the changing framework, not just the the (changing) content.
• Don’t do the mistake of replicating libraries online as it is. They already did the
mistake of replicating the classroom online.
• The web is not a destination, but a network of decentralized components.
Harness the network properties.
• Understand the technological, social and
economical drivers for future developments.
• Rethink the virtual visit to complement physical visits.
• Understand contextuality provided by the web and how to tap into it from the
library perspective.

33. The Mundaneum – the brave new library?!
• Google’s mission is the same as
libraries have had for centuries.
It’s time to understand digital
convergence in new ways.
(Teemu Arina)
• Why are libraries not as visible
as Google? Why don’t we have a
global logo?
• Why are not libraries marketing
them as citizens´special
advisers?
• What is the Mundaneum today?

34. www.lib.hel.fi
www.lib.hel.fi/english