40 years of library services in the Carelia building on the Joensuu campus, part 4

The Joensuu Campus Library of the University of Eastern Finland is located in the Carelia building, which turned forty years old in 2025. Over the decades, the library’s facilities and services have undergone changes. Now we are once again on the threshold of a new transformation: the campus development project will bring new actors into the building.

In the upcoming semester, we will celebrate the forty-year-old library space with a series of blog posts. We will also share information about the changes that will come to the facilities as part of the campus development project.

From one renovation to another

In the 2010s, digitalisation increasingly influenced the discussion about the library as a physical space. People asked what kinds of user needs the library space should serve—were bookshelves and quiet reading corners still enough. The library was seen as an increasingly versatile learning environment. This development was also reflected in the Joensuu Campus Library, which was now part of the University of Eastern Finland Library.

In 2011, a major renovation was carried out at the Joensuu Campus Library. The university had been looking for a place on the Joensuu campus to host learning centre services, and a suitable space was found in the Carelia building’s library. During the spring and summer, the first floor of the campus library was emptied, and the library was closed entirely for a few weeks. Otherwise, customer service could be provided during the renovation from two temporary service points.

The renovation included renewing the library’s service desk and integrating the learning centre services into its extension. The number of bookshelves on the first floor was significantly reduced, as they were replaced with around one hundred computers with workstations for customer use. Library materials were moved to other floors or to the National Repository Library. The University of Joensuu and the University of Kuopio libraries had been using the National Repository Library as a storage location for infrequently used materials since its establishment in 1989.

In line with the university’s strategic objective of providing the best learning environment in Finland, the facilities of the Joensuu Campus Library were further developed in 2017. The library carried out an extensive, user‑engaged design process that lasted about a year. The computer area on the first floor was expanded to the opposite side of the hall, creating a zone intended for quiet work. In response to user wishes, reading places were renewed in the other floors of the library, and the furniture in the halls and group study rooms was updated. Efforts were also made to improve comfort more generally on the basis of user feedback. Already in the previous year, the interior of the library’s newspaper hall had been updated, and it had been reopened as a lounge area called Olola.

The most significant change in the 2017 renovation was enabling round‑the‑clock access to the first floor — the library in Joensuu moved to a 24/7 schedule. The opening ceremony for the renewed facilities was held on September 8, 2017, accompanied by remarks from the Academic Rector.

The collection rooms of the campus library faced pressures beyond the new needs for learning spaces. In 2013, the library decided to relinquish the Metria book storage facility, which had been opened four years earlier. Emptying the storage space during 2014 was a massive undertaking: nearly 1,900 shelf‑metres of material needed to be relocated or removed. The Metria facility had housed, among other things, donated collections previously kept in separate storage rooms, as well as part of the collection of the translation studies programme, which had moved from Savonlinna to Joensuu in 2009. Since all the material could not fit onto the campus library’s shelves, some of it was again transferred to the National Repository Library or distributed to customers.

The collection reorganisation continued in 2018, when the teacher education activities of the Savonlinna campus were transferred to Joensuu. At the same time, the Savonlinna Campus Library of the University of Eastern Finland was closed. Preparations for relocating the Savonlinna collections were made so that only up‑to‑date materials needed for teaching would be placed in the other campus libraries. In the end, approximately 13,000 volumes were transferred to the Joensuu Campus Library and a few hundred volumes to the Kuopio Campus Library.

Thus, pressure for changes to the Joensuu Campus Library’s facilities arose from many directions. However, the rapid digitalisation of materials meant that printed collections no longer necessarily required the same amount of shelf space or floor space as before. The acquisition of new materials increasingly focused on electronic resources. The library discontinued — or was forced to discontinue — its preservation‑oriented collection policy for all materials other than the legally mandated deposit collection. The primary aim became maintaining an up‑to‑date working collection.

Renovations in the Carelia building continued when, in 2021, facilities for the Joensuu Music Conservatory were built adjacent to the campus library. At the same time, the working spaces on the library’s first floor were thoroughly reshaped: personal workstations were replaced with an activity‑based office featuring small rooms for focused work. The offices on the second floor remained unchanged for the time being, but the area around the library’s service desk underwent changes once again, as a passageway from the conservatory’s facilities to the Carelia lobby was constructed partly through it.

The renovation was planned as the COVID‑19 pandemic spread. That was also when the era of multi‑location work began at the library. A large part of the staff still works remotely for at least part of the week.

The university’s most significant facility project launched in the 2020s — a campus development initiative extending into the 2030s — is still in the planning phase at the time of writing. The aim of the project, which concerns both campuses, is to make more efficient use of facilities and to update them to better support evolving working and learning needs.

As part of the project, new units will be moving into the Carelia building. The university’s education services will relocate some of their work and service points into the library’s current staff areas as well as into customer spaces on the first floor. In addition, the project plans include expanding the 24/7 area to the library’s second floor. At present, construction work at Carelia is expected to begin in 2027. We will return to the topic in future blog posts.

Sources:

Annual Reports of the University of Eastern Finland Library, 2010-2020.
Joensuun kampuskirjaston remonttiblogi 2011 (in Finnish)
Paikat muutoksen puhurissa – osa 1, osa 2, osa 3, osa 4, osa 5. UEF Library blog 2017-2018 (in Finnish)

Mikko Meriläinen, information specialist
Riitta Porkka, head of services
Collection services

Part 1: Library facilities to the university’s new main building
Part 2: In presentable and modern facilities
Part 3: From spaciousness to crampedness