Archive - Historical Material

Since 1998 the National Repository Library of Finland (NRL) has worked in cooperation with the National Library of Karelia, Russia, to deliver article copies using Ariel program. The activity has been funded partly by the Finnish government's support program of the Finno-Ugric Peoples in Russia and partly by the NRL.

The national economy of the republic of Karelia has been in a state of recession and there are only limited possibilities to cooperate with foreign libraries. Borrowing and document delivery from abroad have been almost impossible. At the same time in Finland modern technology has been installed to improve document delivery and interlending.

The paper discusses the document delivery and book donation program between the NRL and the National Library of Karelia: its meaning for the whole library community in the republic of Karelia and especially for the minorities speaking Finno-Ugric languages; and experiences on document delivery activities between libraries in different economic conditions. These experiences range from solving practical problems like a lack of paper to questions on arranging funding for this activity. There is also the question of whether there actually is a need for scholarly material in Karelia that can be met by the NRL.

The paper also discusses the preconditions for the library staff in Karelia to handle modern ways of document delivery as well as information retrieval from the catalogue of the NRL. The functioning of Internet connections are also discussed. Finally there is an evaluation of the activities so far and an estimation of the possibilities of organising similar activities elsewhere.