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68% Positive
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#library#oodi#libraries#public#more#books#space#everyone#helsinki#might
Discussion (42 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Sure you can hang out in any cafe, but I find it valuable to have a place like Oodi that's free, easy to access, and built with kids in mind. When taking the kids on trips in Helsinki, we often visit Oodi to eat lunch, just because it's so easy. Or the whole trip might be just to visit Oodi, eat, and grab a couple books. Of course the central location helps a lot.
The article summarizes the functional parts so well. What is very hard to communicate is the feeling of space, especially in the top floor with the books. It's sort of unique, and recommend a visit anyone traveling nearby.
I worked at the company that developed the software used to design the construction of Oodi (Trimble/ Tekla Structures). It's so awesome to walk through a building you know the tool you helped to build, helped to build :D
https://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-2000005933560.html
It's beautiful, though, but that's about it.
t. a Finn
t. not a Finn.
Very cheap, relatively benign, with light educational and recreational value.
Decent.
> and a built-in cinema, which shows classic movies for little money.
Some of it can have benign cultural value, some of it can have malign cultural value. A bit expensive. Could have limited it to more boring but educational movies and films, perhaps with a focus on edutainment friendly to young children. Why spend taxpayer money on enabling people to watch braindead, mindrotting zombie movies for free or cheap?
Bad and soulless, fire whoever was involved with this.
> professional digital working stations, with high-quality screens!
Expensive. Some educational potential, some startup potential, but will that be realized?
Serves some fields but not others. Did they take a look at demand and supply regarding society?
Vulnerable to theft, grift and corruption?
Too expensive, cheaper hardware would probably have made more sense, unless they can make a strong case for the expensive hardware.
> There’s a big number of recording studios and sound production studios, all of which you can rent!
Is there really a dearth of professional musicians in Finnish society? This seems focused on startups and budding professionals, but a much cheaper space with much cheaper instruments that could be given to children both young and old, where instruments can be cheaply replaced once the children breaks them, would have much higher educational and creative value.
Bad and soulless, fire everyone involved with this.
> Oh, and while we’re at it, why don’t we rent some instruments, as well? There’s full-time staff maintaining them.
Grift and corruption, fire everyone involved with this, go straight to prison, do not collect $200.
> There’s many small and big group rooms which you can rent, many of them in active use! I see group meetings, students working, and podcast interviews being recorded!
Genuinely great for students, not that expensive. Good.
> Wanna rent a kitchen and cook with your friends? Sure, you can do that here!
A bit expensive. For homeless people and grift. The library staff might end up discriminating against homeless people, or have extra grift. Could have been good if limited to educational usage for children and teenagers, with adult supervision.
Have fun with homeless people committing theft in the library.
Bad.
> You can also rent game rooms with modern video game consoles and VR gear, along with the games to play in them!
Bad, corrupt and expensive. Could have been used for some more meaningful purposes like education and startups. Like letting children and teenagers try VR gear and program software for it, and possibly get inspired for non-entertainment usage of VR such as remote healthcare.
If really insisting on mindrotting entertainment that people can do at home, then it could have been done much more cheaply.
Fire everyone involved with it.
> There’s a makerspace: It has several 3D printers, multiple laser cutters, and engravers. And staff which can help you learn how to use them.
> Sewing machines! Shirt presses! Cutting plotters!
Expensive. Could be great regarding startups and education. Did they analyze needs for society, or did they do it due to it being trendy? Probably still good.
I know you’re just trying to show off how superior you are, and you haven’t really thought through the implications of somebody getting fired for making a mistake, but I’d like this rhetorical flourish to end. Making a mistake (or disappointing an internet commenter who’s put in very little thought and even less effort into a solution) isn’t something that should threaten people’s livelihoods.
On a related note, your style of post comes across as immature and/or socially inept. You might want to rethink how you present yourself online.
Might want to open their webpage at least once before you spout such uninformed opinions: https://kinoregina.fi/
Their whole thing is showing mostly culturally important films from known and lesser known directors/actors from around the world. I honestly don't think it could provide much more cultural value than it already does.
I was going to write more but the more I read your post it just looks like troll post so I'll just point out that yes, they do also provide movie and arts education, which is also stated on their website.
Oh yeah.
In Finland, the country notoriously famous for its unmanageable homelessness problem.
Get a reality check, my friend.
Previously:
> So many environments nowadays, even the ones that are ostensibly created to fulfill this sort of thing, are just total failures at actually providing them. I'm thinking of things like public libraries. I live in Austin and have a major axe to grind about the public libraries here, which are nothing like what you'd get if you were actually interested in the pro-social goals that you'd think a public library would have in its charter. A teenager looking to escape their high-risk environment or an adult who's had their feet knocked out from beneath them basically stands no chance at getting out of their predicament if their only option were to use the public libraries here, which would unfortunately act more like a vortex to ensure they stay in the suck. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42323264>
The photos and breathless wonderment showcase it all, as well as this choice line from the slide at the top of this post: "Oodi is our common living room". These are not quiet places to study or get (back) on your feet.
These are non-commercial substitutes for the shopping malls of yestercentury first, egoistic art pieces and boondoggle for administrative make-work second, and well-intentioned but poorly thought out and executed public resources at a very, very, very, very, very distant third.
It's great that libraries exist, be they in Austin, or here in Finland, but they're not where you get support when falling on hard times , or needing active support and assistance from your council/government/city/region. A library is not a walk-in rescue center, and nor should it be.
Oodi is a pretty space, it has nice facilities, although a surprisingly small stock of books. That said you can order books to collect them there, and Helsinki has no shortage of "real libraries". I think Oodi as a showcase, and a random mishmash of services and facilities is pretty good though. I went almost weekly with my youngest child for a few years, and have fond memories of the people I talked to, and the soft-play area.
… is this a joke? Regardless of the bizarre mental place from which only such a bizarre question can arise[1], the answer to the question can be found on the other end of the link I included—not that it should even have to be spelled out: "Researchers determined risk by asking lots of questions. For example, they asked whether the kid has basic necessities, like electricity or a quiet place to study."
* * * * *
> A library is not a walk-in rescue center, and nor should it be.
Right. Exactly. It's a library. It should be a library—one able to provide (and that does provide) the things that you should be able to count on a library to provide—and that few other places can if that's what you need. Not a cacophonous community center concerned foremost with providing photo ops for bougie normies living in relative comfort to post on Instagram during their disruptive stroll through. That's the _entire_ basis of my position and the premise of the multiple comments I wrote about this.
1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40136743#:~:text=I%20ca...>
But its worth mentioning that there are fewer and fewer "other public spaces." My local library is just that, a library, and that means I can't:
1. Eat in it, perhaps while studying. 2. Talk above a whisper. 3. Rent anything but books that I might want/need. 4. Do anything on a computer but be on the internet (the computers run a locked down version of Windows XP)
That's not a "problem" exactly. This library is doing exactly what a library is supposed to do. But my town has one other "public" space, which is a combined community and senior center. That's not good for much outside of chair yoga for a kid in a high risk environment; it's largely designed for adults.
It's nice that my library is "just a library" because I don't need it to be anything else. But the fact is that the library is one of the few open, walk-in, free public spaces left. It being "just a library" in that case seems like a missed opportunity.
Libraries, like institutions in general, evolve over time. Libraries have extended their range services from books and study spaces to newspapers and magazines to music recordings to computers, printers, and internet access to all kinds of devices to event spaces and meeting rooms, and so on. At some point, you have to decide whether all these services should be under the umbrella of the same organization, or if you should create a new organization. But because new organizations mean more administrative overhead, you only create them if you expect it to improve the services.
Many of the more traditional libraries I've used were located in various community centers. In addition to the library, those centers might have event spaces, exhibition spaces, adult education programs, youth centers, and so on. Oodi might have fancier architecture and a more central location, but it's fundamentally not that different.
Helsinki still has classic public libraries, so kids wanting to study in peace can still do that plus having the opportunity to meet people and engage in other activities that might be difficult at home, like practicing an instrument.
The notion that a knocked-over person is best supported by a library sounds quite strange from my perspective. A person struggling needs first and foremost to shelter, food and access to hygiene. Libraries do not provide any of that. They do provide a quite place to think and work and access to public information with newspapers and internet access, but a good shelter and a smartphone provide this too.
I think Finland (and many other countries) provide enough support to relieve Libraries of being a first address for struggling people, while still maintaining these libraries for what they are really needed. Oodi and similar projects existing does not take that away and I'm surprised you think it does.
But here is the thing: in Finland academic libraries are open to the general public. Someone wanting to immerse themselves in actual books, or work in silence, have a wealth of options in downtown Helsinki: the University of Helsinki main library, the Finnish National Library, the Finnish Literature Society's library, the Research Institute for Languages of Finland's library, and more. So, if Oodi ended up being a plain old social third space instead of a "real library", that didn't take anything away from Helsinki residents.
That's the real problem I have with the false promises of places like Austin's Central Library and other Oodi-likes.
The biggest threat to libraries and the social goods they're ostensibly designed to produce are not really the people trying to tear them down to tighten budgets. It's way more pernicious than that:
The biggest threat is the people trying to tear them down and replace them with places like this.
Taxes and corruption.
Helsinki weather is crap. Half a year it is too windy, too wet and too cold to be outside. It rains sleet or snow very often.
Oodi is a great place to do things or just to stop by. No pressure to buy anything. No ads up to your eyeballs.
There are a lot of people just sitting by. Studying. Reading books. Using the provided services. Meeting up people.
The layout is good, especially the second floor that containts most of the services. There are a lot of spaces where you can just _sit_ without obligations.
I am sorry, but I think your ending sentence does not make any sense.
(I am a Finn, I visit Oodi roughly once a week during work trip to the capital).
I find Oodi (and Sello after redesign) to feel like a typical open office space (rather than mall) but definitely not like a proper library.
Rikhardinkatu is what I'd expect library to be while Lippulaiva is rather nice for a library that's part of a mall.
Austin Central Library has a 4.7/5.0 on 1,464 reviews on Google Maps. Of course, this is a biased sample. But, I think it's safe to say lots of people love it.