The National Library of Finland (NLF) agreed on an “Open National Library” policy in 2016[1]. In the policy there are eight principles, which are divided into accessibility, openness in actions and collaboration. Accessibility in the NLF means that access to the material needs to exist both for the metadata and the content, while respecting the rights of the rights holders. Openness in operations means that our actions and decision models are transparent and clear, and that the materials are accessible to the researchers and other users. These are one way in which the NLF can implement the findable, accessible, interoperable, re-usable (FAIR) data principles [2] themes in practise. The purpose of this paper is to view the way in which the policy has impacted our work and how findability and accessibility have been implemented in particular from the aspects of open, extended, closed and hidden data themes. In addition, our aim is to specify the characteristics of existing and potential forms of data produced by the NLF from the research and development perspectives. A continuous challenge is the availability of the digital resources - gaining access to the digitised material for both researchers and the general public, since there are also constant requests for access to newer materials outside the legal deposit libraries' work stations.
National Library of Finland (NLF) is the oldest and largest scholarly library in Finland
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In this paper we will process the following questions. What kind of data categories there exist? What kind of alternatives are there to open digitized material use in Finland? What kind of benefits digitized materials can bring to researchers and other users? These issues have been explored in several development projects of NLF over the years, resulting in few potential alternatives and solutions for the use of the open digitized material. 1.1
NLF has wide and versatile collections. The access to the material depends on the way how the material has become part of the collections of the library and also on the age and the type of the material. The Fig. 1 lists the many types of the digital materials there is, where different copyright statuses. Material types create one aspect for considering availability, as there might be different rules as for how each can be utilized and even added to the collections of the library.
In Finland the copyright act states that the author holds the copyright to her works
during her lifetime and until 70 years after the year of the author’s death. This applies
both to monographs and articles in newspapers and journals. Published photographs, if
they have required level of originality can have 70 years or lower depending on the
situation. For example copyright organisation Kopiosto has used a 100 year limit for
material being copyright-free [
The findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) principles state for
example that to be findable, metadata or data itself should have identifiers, which can be
searched. With regard to accessibility, this requirement is expanded to such data is
retrievable via a standardised communication protocol. Interoperability requires that
knowledge is in a suitable language and is re-usable, for example, that the data usage
license is defined [
The findable objective have been met with the new NLF data catalogue[
In a broad categorisation, the NLF has four different categories available: open, extended, closed and hidden. Open data are, for example, digitised newspapers in the presentation system at digi.nationallibrary.fi, where old editions of newspapers and journals, up to 1910, have been open for several years. During 2017, this material limit was extended to 1920, so now it is possible to read, for example, newspapers from the days when Finnish independence was declared. By extended materials, we mean materials that are digitised and opened for extended use via contracts. In past pilot projects, for example, this extended the use to a specifically defined workstations for specific newspapers for a specific time range. This required contracts between publishers, rights holders and the NLF to enable extended usage. 2.1
In NLF, the open data means both the metadata and the contents of the digitized materials. Open data is available to all users regardless of time and location. At the minimum there is visual presentation available via library presentation systems, or metadata of the objects themselves. Depending on the needs sometimes the digital presentation via digi.nationallibrary.fi or via other systems, sometimes, e.g. researchers might need the export packages with which it is possible to do text or data mining in their own research infrastructures. The data can also be used via another research data management tools and combined with other data.
The Fig. 2 illustrates the states in which the data can be accessed and to where data can transition after its production. From the library’s point of view, it seems that new requirements in enriching data may highlight the need to hide certain data, while extracting other material could enable extending that particular part of the data onwards.
When looking at the way in which different data states operate, closed materials are the ones that are available in the legal deposit libraries – they are available and only require a visit to one of the six university libraries in Finland, which have legal deposit rights. Closed materials also include materials that are difficult to digitise or that have complicated copyright structures. This is typically the case with newspapers in which each writer or illustrator of an article has individual rights to the work. Even finding the original authors can be complicated task after decades have passed.
Hidden materials are a versatile selection of various types of materials: works that have not been digitised and might not even be catalogued, or material that has been retracted, i.e., hidden from use at the request of the rights holder. Hidden materials could be quite interesting for research, since they might entail something for which nobody even comes to ask from the library, even though the content could be quite interesting. Even within open, existing data, there can be digitally available materials that require additional enrichment, in order for the user to find specific pieces of information from the large corpus because some phenomena cannot be mastered with welldefined search words. 2.2
The National Library of Finland (NLF) like other libraries utilize special
development projects in order to do improvements to either material availability, to the features
of the presentation system or to the creating ways to get born-digital materials to the
library in more efficient manner. In one such project, NLF opened its cultural heritage
materials to various actors and organisations in the town of Mikkeli and its surrounding
regions. We used on-location workstations as a way to extend access to digital,
in-copyright newspapers to museums, schools and archives [
There is increasing aim to offer more materials to all users, who would benefit from
specific collection. There are many different access levels to materials: some are
copyright free, some in-copyright and in Finland it is also possible to extend usage of the
materials via agreements. In addition, some material is so delicate that it can be reserved
and viewed only in the reading rooms. In 2017, an agreement was made with the
copyright organisation Kopiosto about opening digitized newspapers from years
19171920 to general public [
In our past user surveys, researchers have been identified as one of the distinctive
user of the newspapers and journals for research purposes [
In the digi.nationallibrary.fi, it is possible to assign rights to different materials based
on IP-addresses, individual user accounts or via the HAKA authentication system. The
name HAKA is the nickname of the Finnish identity federation of the Finnish
universities, polytechnics and research institutes [
In an ongoing project, the HAKA authentication was implemented in the digital
presentation system of newspapers, journals and technical metadata as a continuance to
the earlier work with the aim of extending access [
In this paper we have shown what kind of data categories there exist, what kind alternatives we have seen in opening different data for different audiences in the past projects. We have also gone through the potential benefits; because the researcher can access the data and have more versatile access to the research content, which contributes to the validity and reliability of the research.
There are problems to be solved in ensuring equal openness to digitised materials to various user groups; however, they can be overcome with co-operation between researchers and library staff. There are also challenges concerning data-mining methodologies. One solution to overcome them is to form research collectives, including researchers and library staff with skills in data mining. Perhaps, in the long run, one solution is to include basic knowledge about data mining in methodology courses in humanities and social sciences.
As we have learnt to know when working with our research questions via development projects, there are requests both from the general public and the society to open more data, but there are arising needs for extending the access but just for some distinctive user group. The technical capabilities requires work, when new authentication and authorization means are implemented and contract creation requires effort so that new contract models match the technical possibilities. In contract creation, the challenge is two-fold: to find interested parties and to define material sets, which answer to the needs of users. The National Library seeks actively opportunities to negotiate more generic contracts which could act as templates for other similar projects. The recently introduced HAKA-authentication will give a new way to reach more of the users from the research and education fields, so that we can extend the material access towards their needs. It could be taken into account that contribution of the library in the contracts would be the actual task of digitisation, cataloguing and ensuring access as defined in the strategy of the National Library of Finland.
Different data access states enable different solutions also for the researchers. If data is openly available, then the key is how to ensure the easy-to-use and in-depth search functionalities, so that it is possible to get an overview of the data. If data are closed, then solutions range from making the data available by cataloguing and digitising them. Finding possible (collective) contract models and funding sources could create new research solutions, which bring benefits to all parties, namely to original authors, rights holders, library itself and more importantly to the users.
Part of this work is funded by the HAKA project (The Ministry of Education and Culture, Kopiosto – copyright organization, Mikkeli University Consortium, The National Library of Finland).