Facilities

The library's customer facilities are on two floors: the Service Floor and the Self-service Floor.

The Service Floor is at street level. Near the entrance are a cloakroom and lockers for coats and bags.

The Service Floor includes the following:

• Reference and Archival Services Desk


• Information Service


• Interlibrary Loans Service


• Reading Room and reference library


• Computers


• Computer rooms


• Microfilm readers and copiers


• Researchers' Room


• Photocopiers


• Readers' Lounge with vending machines

Most of the library's collections are in the Closed Stacks.

There are exhibition facilities in the rear part of the floor.

The Self-service Floor is downstairs and houses the library's Open Access Collection.

Customers can fetch publications from the Open Access Collection and borrow them at the Reference and Archival Services Desk. The SELMA database shows where publications are located.

The Self-service Floor also has a newspaper and magazine room, a few desks, customer computers and a photocopier.

The Aurora lecture room is in the rear part of the floor.

The Library of Parliament moved to its present facilities from Parliament's main building in 1978, when an annex designed by the architectural firm of Pitkänen-Laiho-Raunio was completed.

The annex was designed so that the interior decoration is in harmony with that of the main building. The line that was taken is based on the functionalist features that have characterised the main building since the start. (Suhonen Pekka, Eduskuntatalon laajennus ja peruskorjaus. In Hakala, Liisa-Maria, Suhonen Pekka (ed.), Suomen eduskunta: tausta, toiminta, rakennus. Eduskunta, Helsinki 1990. p. 155)

The lobby and furnishings have an open arrangement characteristic of functionalism, with dividing spaces, shiny round columns, large glass surfaces and decorations combining dark-stained flamy birch and steel. The polished granite used in the lower lobby also connects the annex to the main building.

The relief-like sculpture in the lower lobby was commissioned from Kain Tapper. The work was completed in 1986 and is entitled Wind. It is made of glued wood, sculpted alder that has been lightly patinated. The movement of the wind rises as a relief from the surface of the sculpture on both sides of the work. (Hakala, Liisa-Maria, Taidetta eduskunnassa. Eduskunta, Helsinki 1994, p. 79)