AKE Porvoo in English

Porvoo City Library is responsible for the regional development task in the Uusimaa region. Our goal is to support development of the public libraries in the region and professional competence of the library staff and to promote cooperation between the public libraries in the region.

Nine Finnish public libraries are tasked with the regional development responsibility. The Ministry of Education and Culture’s regulation on libraries with regional development tasks came into effect on August 1, 2018. This regulation made Porvoo City Library one of the nine libraries responsible for regional development tasks. The other AKE libraries are located in Joensuu, Kuopio, Lahti, Oulu, Rovaniemi, Tampere, Turku, and Vaasa.

• We organize webinars, meetings, virtual coffee breaks, workplace exchange and library visits
• We create networking opportunities for libraries and librarians in the region, for example an annual library cycling event
• We have two networks, one for those working in children’s and youth libraries and another for those working with the elderly
• We create and lead inspiring workshops for library staff on various topics, such as skills development or future forecasting
• We lend for example escape games, kamishibai story theater and media appliances to libraries

• 1,8 million inhabitants, 31 % of the entire population of Finland
• 26 municipalities, 15 of them bilingual
• 76,9 % speak Finnish, 7,6 % Swedish, 15,5 % another language
• 58 % of those speaking another language in Finland live in Helsinki/Uusimaa

• 120 service points
• 1121 professionals
• 24 million loans
• 18,7 million library visits and 18,4 million web visits
• 20 994 events

• Bilingual municipalities and libraries (Finnish and Swedish)
• Library cycling: Visiting libraries by bicycle and networking
• Competence discussions: Workshops with library staff
• Peer-group mentoring for library professionals
• Foresight, future work and library sector trend cards

• Liboppi is an e-learning platform with online courses for the staff in Finnish public libraries
• Online courses include text, images, audio, video and a variety of learning tasks
• There are courses in both Finnish and Swedish
• The content production is coordinated by a national editorial board