Hämeenlinna’s digital delivery pilot project continues until June
We deliver all reading room and interlibrary loan orders digitally in Hämeenlinna.
Since October 2024, digital delivery has been tested in Hämeenlinna.
During that time, we have delivered all materials ordered to the reading room as well as all interlibrary loans ordered from Hämeenlinna to our customers digitally.
The reading room and customer service in Hämeenlinna have been closed to customers during the trial.
Our customers have embraced digital deliveries with enthusiasm. Almost 24 shelf meters of digitised archival units have already been accumulated. This means about 230,000 digitised images for use by everyone.
A single archival unit can be ordered free of charge at a time. A new order can be placed after the previous one has been completed.
Delivery times have extended from what was promised
Currently, the average delivery time for materials is 31 days. That is up to double the 4–16 days we promised before the pilot.
The extended delivery times have resulted from the Christmas break in deliveries and the abundance of orders for special-format materials. Then again, the original estimate was too optimistic.
The materials ordered by our customers for digitisation have taken us by surprise as the project has progressed. There have been materials in special formats such as several agricultural inquiries.
An agricultural inquiry is a large booklet containing information about farm ownership, equipment level and livestock.
These types of materials require more time than standard documents, as they must be carefully opened and scanned page by page using a map scanner.
Process development requires more information and time
Digital delivery is an important development step for the National Archives of Finland, as it enables the demand-based digitisation of materials, as well as time- and place-independent access to the archived materials required by customers.
At the same time, it is a completely new operating model, which has required the National Archives to learn by doing.
While we want to make the process as smooth as possible for our customers and personnel, we need even more information and time to do this. Therefore, we have now decided to extend the pilot until 30 June 2025.
To enable digital delivery, the reading room and customer service at the Hämeenlinna branch will remain closed for the duration of the pilot project.
Information services will be available through the shared telephone service for reading rooms and through the National Archives’ chat service.
Researcher customers have a separate channel to order larger amounts of material
Are you a researcher or a member of a research project and need access to more extensive datasets? Please contact us by emailing [email protected].
Further information
Maria Kallio-Hirvonen
Head of unit, User Experience
[email protected]