Within the European Union, the Education, Youth and Culture (EYC) Council is the body dealing with cultural and audiovisual issues. In recent years, digitisation of cultural heritage has been one of the top issues on the Council’s agenda. The goal is to make digitised cultural materials available and widely utilised through the European Digital Library, Europeana. In Finland, the National Digital Library is responsible for implementing the digitation goal and transmitting the relevant information to Europeana.
The European cooperation forum in the library field is called NAPLE (National Authorities on Public Libraries in Europe) and it consists of representatives of the national library authorities in Europe. The Ministry of Education and Culture actively participates in the activities of the forum.
When it comes to the activities of the UN and its organisations, the Ministry of Education and Culture follows matters concerning access to information and media literacy and, where necessary, issues statements on these matters, for example within the framework of the UNESCO Information for All Programme and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a joint project of the UN and the ITU.
International and multicultural cooperation of libraries in Finland
Multilingual Library is one of the special libraries operating in Finland. The mission of the Multilingual Library is to provide library services for speakers of foreign languages residing in Finland. The Ministry grants a separate discretionary government transfer for the activities of the Multilingual Library. The funds allocated for multilingual library activities are used for acquiring materials in languages that are rare in Finland. These materials can be borrowed through all libraries in Finland.
Finland has two co-Nordic mobile libraries in Lapland. These mobile libraries contain materials in Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish and Saami. The Ministry of Education and Culture finances the activities of these mobile libraries in Finland.
