The Helsinki Univeristy Library's collection policy is updated every three years. The collection policy steers the decisions and choices made at the library in accordance with its implementation plan and the strategic plan of the university.
The principles remain same:
- We primarily serve the teachers, students and researchers at the University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital
- Our objective is to acquire high quality, actively used materials
- We ensure access to materials for the University community
- We promote the visibility of research at the University of Helsinki
During the update process, the main clarification was related to the course and textbook material. The multipurpose and -formatting of the material is emphasized in the changing operational environment. The library's mission is to support the teacher and student in the use of a variety of materials, including open educational resources (OER).
In the development of open education resources, the library considers the national policy guidelines for open learning and open educational resources. We encourage and instruct teachers to utilize open access materials, for example by publishing guides and taking it into account in information seeking courses. We also offer Helda Open Books (HOB) service, which is a publishing platform for open access books written by teachers, for example in cases when the textbooks are sold-out.
An important part of the library’s collection development is to promote the availability, visibility and discoverability of material published by university researchers and teachers, for example by ensuring the good quality of metadata and acquiring the publications of university researchers in the library's collections.
The aim of the library is also to develop the discoverability of research data generated in the research conducted at the university.