Cycling for libraries is about to begin

Cycling for libraries – Librarians on the move

Tomorrow, on 25th of May we will hop on the Turku→Stockholm ferry, and drive to Copenhagen. As you all know, our Cycling for libraries -unconference begins on 28th of May, and our temporary, mobile thinktank of almost 100 people will bicycle 650km to Berlin, and finally merge into the 100th Deutscher Bibliothekartag.

Organizing a bicycling unconference is a huge (surprisingly huge!) amount of work, but luckily it’s fun and interesting. Many things have been prepared, and some things have been abandoned. After being in contact with our participants and our dear friends along our route, i know for certain that this will be epic.

I cannot wait. Adventure awaits!

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Trip to old fortress in Lieto, and KDK

"So, this bunch of barbarians was coming from over there..."

Yesterday a dozen or so people from Turku City Library bicycled to Lieto, to a historical site called Vanhalinna. It’s a pretty weird looking big rock sticking out of the flat ground, a bit like Uluru or something. Anyway, there used to be an important fortress when these parts of the world were coming to iron age. The big hill used to be and island of the archipelago. But now the sea has retreated quite a bit and a new fortress was built around the 13th centuy. This new fortress is the Turku Castle.

Being a little new here at Turku City Library, i learned that this is an annual tradition here to bicycle to some interesting site nearby in the springtime, and that’s fantastic of course (kuka tietää mitä on ”tyhy-toiminta” englanniksi?)

There is also a mansion next to the big rock. The site is administered by a foundation, and part of the Turku University. They have an interesting museum there, with several historical exhibitions and art exhibitions too.

Museums and museum-people fascinate me (remember, they are our sisters and brothers), so i had a little chat with a member of the staff there (aargh i didn’t catch her name). I asked about their cataloguing work, and she told me so far they have catalogued objects, and also would like to catalogue all the buildings in the area. We talked some stuff about education to become librarians and museum-people. Then we also talked about collection management in museums and libraries… and soon we were talking about KDK, (Kansallinen digitaalinen kirjasto, National Digital Library of Finland). KDK is a bit special because in addition to libraries, it has  museum and archive colletions in it too, all in a unified user interface… it’s a bit like a national Europeana really. Anyway i told her about those KDK and Europeana, and she said they are now converting their database so they can join Musketti, a database system for finnish museums… then KDK too. This is great, because i am currently working here in Turku to prepare KDK so that it will be suitable for the Vaski-consortia in this area and for finnish public libraries in general. I want to help the Linnavuori museum-people to join KDK if i just can!

Down to the mansion

The bicycling trip was about 20km, so it’s a great little daytrip if you want to visit a nice, interesting site close to Turku.

Thanks to Krisse, our excellent guide who told us a lot of interesting stuff about the site, thanks the museum-person for chats and also to everyone who joined the tour.

Nice Cycling for libraries tour, 110km Helsinki→Porvoo→Helsinki

The official Cycling for libraries cook Pasi Niemi got thumbs up 🙂

Last saturday, on 7th of May we did a bicycle tour from Helsinki to Porvoo and back. Total distance was about 110 kilometers. We were a team of 9 cyclists, plus a 3 -person filmteam and cook. The weather was really sunny, fortunately. I got almost nothing about the event on camera but luckily we had Jonas Tana with us, who is awesome with photographs and we had Kirjastokaista.fi -filmteam working with us. So keep your eyes open for some nice video+photos. I’m sure then you’ll be convinced it wasn’t just eating (like my photos), but sweaty cycling too. A lot of it.

This was kind of a training, prepping and marketing event for the actual Cycling for libraries -event from Copenhagen to Berlin, in the end of this month (*gasp* not far in the future). And in our debriefing with Jukka, we were happy to sum up that everything went quite perfectly 🙂 This day was 110 km, and the longest day of the main event is only about ten kilometers more, on 5th of June when we arrive in Berlin. I’m sure we can do it.

This pre-event was announced via Facebook mostly, and through the word of mouth. We departed from Itäkeskus at about 10 o’clock, and were back there a little after 18, so we spent almost 9 hours overall.

Enjoying and XQ at Söderkulla library

On our way we had a very nice stop at Söderkulla library, and Camilla was kind enough to come and show us the places, even when the library was closed. They’ve had a new library there since 2009, and i really like the way local comic artists, including bicycle-loving Kaisa Leka (see her comicblog too) are contributing to their library in large-size illustrations. We got some refreshments and chats at the library terrace, which i’m sure is a great place to enjoy the library collections on a nice day. The Söderkulla library also has an artotheque, and that’s something i always really appreciate.

Next up, the whole event with 10 times more people and 10 times more days on the road! Less than 3 weeks until the start.

By the way, big thanks to everyone who is giving their support for Cycling for libraries, i’m sure all the participants will find this unique library conference to be memorable experience, which will have long-lasting effects. Librarians, stay on the move.