Law and Arts Libraries

Both faculty libraries in the Harmonie Building acquired new heads or acting heads – who also act as cluster librarian – and were asked to explore the practicality and desirability of cooperating more closely. Merging the two libraries into a joint Harmonie Library seemed a logical step.

However, we were soon overtaken by the plans to combine several libraries into one City Centre Library, with the Arts Library the first to take the plunge (in 2014) and the Law Library following later. Cooperation in the practical sense was pursued more modestly by the two libraries, but wherever necessary and possible they initiated activities together (e.g. working visits, theme meetings, house rules enforcement week, drinking coffee together) and helped each other out (e.g. with desk staffing problems).

Central to the activities of both teams are, of course, the standard services: desk work, collection building, instruction workshops for various target groups, creating and improving Libguides, expanding and maintaining the network of faculty and other contacts, etc. In addition, several staff members participated in projects and working groups.

In September 2012, a large part of the modern languages degree programmes at the Faculty of Arts were clustered into the new European Languages and Cultures degree programme. The degree programmes in Finnish, Hungarian, Norwegian and Danish will be discontinued, which will of course have implications for collection building in these subject fields.

The Arts Library has started preparations for the upcoming relocation to the University Library building. It requires a great deal of attention and creates an extra workload for the staff, because they have to deal with the relocation alongside their regular work activities.

The Law and Arts teams jointly and voluntarily participated in the R&O interview pilot.