APPLICATION FORM

LIBRARY DATA

Library name: Sastamala Public Library Address: Sillankorvankatu 1, 38210 City: Sastamala Country: Finland Phone: +35840 1382040 Webpage url: http://www.sastamalankaupunki.fi/sastamala/aloitussivu/index.tmpl?sivu_id=3 228 Contact 2.0: Facebook page, Blog’s url, etc. https://www.facebook.com/#!/sastamalankaupunginkirjasto

Contact person: Kaisa Kytömäki Title: Cultural librarian E‐mail Address: [email protected]

LIBRARY DESCRIPTION

Please, mark the characteristics of your library (mark all those appropriate):

Metropolitan library

Rural library

Library service with branch libraries

Mobile library

Children and Young Adults Library

Library with less than 1,000 inhabitants

Library between 1,000 and 5,000 inhabitants

Library between 5,000 and 10,000 inhabitants

Library between 10,000 and 20,000 inhabitants

Library between 20,000 and 30,000 inhabitants

Library between 30,000 and 100,000 inhabitants

Library between 100,000 and 200,000 inhabitants

Library between 200,000 and 500,000 inhabitants

Library with more than 500,000 inhabitants

MORE INFORMATION

Please, tell us a bit more about your library, pictures are also welcome:

Short description: The city of Sastamala covers an area of 1 387,56 km², and there are about 24500 inhabitants. The city is located in Western Finland in the Pirkanmaa region. Sastamala is a combination of older towns that came together in 2009 to form one bigger city. This is why it has several smaller centers instead of a big one, and there is also a great deal of countryside in the city area. The library consists of the Main library, and six branch libraries in different parts of the city: Äetsä, Kiikka, Mouhijärvi, Suodenniemi, Karkku, and Stormi. There is also a mobile library service covering the entire Sastamala area. Our permanent staff includes of 19 people, in addition to which there are two fixed‐term employees, two apprenticeship trainees, and one project employee. The library staff is busy but creative, and we are currently in the process of developing and improving our collections and services to meet the demands of a modern library user, as well as the traditional one. Sastamala public library is part of PIKI network, which covers all libraries in the Pirkanmaa region. Thus, in addition to our collection of about 230000 books and 14000 pieces of other material, the customers are able to borrow material from any library in PIKI, and they can order books from one library to another. They can also browse the collections, renew their loans and make reservations at PIKI web library (http://piki.verkkokirjasto.fi/web/arena).

Current library programs: At the moment, we are especially trying to develop the library‐school‐cooperation in Sastamala, as well as the children and young adults department in general. We have a project employee, who is working on creating a functional network between Sastamala libraries and schools, and creating guidelines for teaching library use to children and adolescents. The Main library youth department will also be improved with the help of local 9th graders, who will design and create a new look to the young adultsʹ area. There is also a new music department under construction in the Main library (the library doesnʹt really have one at the moment), and this will hopefully mean an increase in musical material as well. Music hobby is active in Sastamala, and we will try and meet the demands of musicians, music students, and other music lovers in the city. This year the library will also purchase digitization equipment, and a project person will be hired to set up the equipment and teach their use to staff and customers.

Please tell us about the kind of activities you would be interested in doing with your sister library: In the beginning it would be nice just to get to know our sister library and its staff, exchanging e‐mails and information about library work, culture, events and ideas etc. It would also be interesting to learn about the language, literature and literary culture in the sister library country, and then perhaps promote that culture in our library through exhibitions and such. We could also think about all kinds of common projects, and perhaps at some point in the future visit each others libraries, if possible.

Languages your staff speaks: English (+ very little French and very very little Polish)

Languages users speak/read: Finnish, English

Preferred countries for cooperation: No preferences, weʹre interested in all sister countries.

Please, tell us a bit about the features of the library that ideally you would like to cooperate with: As long as we can find some common interests and a language to communicate with, we are open to different kinds of libraries. Perhaps the cooperation would work best with a library that is about the same size as ours.

EUROPEAN UNION PROGRAMS

Please, indicate if you are searching partners in other countries for any European Union project:

YES NO

If yes, for which projects?:

Please, indicate if you are participating in any European Union program:

YES NO