BERLIN - ESPOO - BERLIN
Learning beyond country borders

Experience report
Jana Hörstermann
Stefanie Mohr

We came to Finland in the summer of 2008 to see and experience the way of working of our colleagues there.

We were heartily welcomed by all but soon we got our first surprise. All the working rooms were empty, so we had to ask ourselves, whether the personnel situation could be even worse than in the Berlin public libraries. Unbelievable! Later, someone told us that during the summer usually only as few people as needed are working in the libraries and that this is a normal situation. Nevertheless it was a major experience for us and hardly comparable to Germany.

It was immediately confirmed that the Finnish people are really talented in languages and we were very impressed to see how easy and flexible they can handle different languages in different situations.

The fact that the whole library system is in English, was another great possibility for us to have even more profit out of this exchange. Since that is why we were all to work on our own in the different departments and to improve our language skills. In German libraries there cannot be thought of working with a library system in only English at the moment.

During the training we noticed many parallels, but also some differences in the organization of work in both countries.

	Library’s young and enthusiastic trainees Stefanie and Jana from Germany.

Even in their daily life the Finnish seem to be more open for technical progresses than the German. This is even reflected by the user behaviour: The common use of self-operation loans and RFID is in Berlin (in public as well as scientific libraries) not even in a pre-state of what we experienced here during the first weeks. In addition, we were very surprised to see that it is not seldom to pay an overdue-loan charge of 40 cents by credit card. But not only the cash-free paying at the circulation desk showed us big differences; also the tolerance border for ringing mobiles is in the circulation desk area higher than we were used to in German libraries. That was not the first time we felt that the Finnish do not see things as strict as the German.

We will always remember the colleagues, who make the library of the Technical University of Helsinki such a special place of education and learning, especially by their future oriented way of working, which develops and supports students’ information and media competence.

The possibility to get an insight into different ways of working is always of great importance and we will share our experiences made in the TKK with our colleagues in Germany. This exchange helped us to develop a better understanding for the librarian work in foreign countries.

Herewith we would like to thank everyone who sacrificed his or her time for us to show us everything and to answer our questions. But special thanks deserve those, who gave us an insight into their way of working, because these insights made this exchange a precious life experience for us.