GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY OF FINLAND

Reference Library

The reference library of the Genealogical Society of Finland is located in the House of Science and Letters in Helsinki. The library's collection consists largely of genealogy books which comprises c. 60 meters of shelves. In addition to genealogy books the collection has genealogy guides, Finnish serial publications as well as some materials relating to Sweden. The totality of the collection has c. 100 meters of shelves. Digitized literature can be accessed on the premises through SukuHaku. Books cannot be borrowed from the reference library but copies can be made of them for a fee.

Opening hours and study spaces

The reference library is free to use during the opening hours of the Society's premises, Mondays from 1pm to 6pm and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from noon to 5pm. Additionally, once a month the premises are open on Saturday from 10am to 2pm. Saturday opening hours can be seen here.

Customers have four reading spaces and computers as well as a printer and photo scanner for their use. Customer terminals have free access to all the Society's web services like the SukuHaku source material as well as Finnish and international database services.

The Reference Library's Index

The index of the reference library's collection can be found on SukuHaku. With the index, one can search for works in the collection by the name of the work or the name of the author.

Digital sources

Part of the reference library's collection has been digitized and the local histories and member catalogs of the collection have electronic personal indexes. Digitized books and indexes are available for the Society's members and can be searched on SukuHaku. SukuHaku is free to use for everyone in the customer terminals of the Society's premises. The digitized books in SukuHaku can be found through the tab Show all on the main page of the service.

Digital sources freely accessible to the library's customers in addition to SukuHaku are the Migration Institute's Emigrant register, the Sveriges Dödbok database, and the American genealogy websites Ancestry and FamilySearch.

Requests for Information

Small requests of information can be made to the reference library free of charge. The request can be e.g. a specific fact or source information in a specific genealogical publication. Replies to such requests will be sent by e-mail.

Requests may also include scanning a couple pages from a genealogy book. Scans are delivered only by e-mail. The request must only concern books belonging to the Genealogical Society of Finland's reference library and they must be presented as clearly as possible with all known prior information (the whole name of the book, the author of the book and the page number or section in which the information is found if it is known). It is also possible to submit small requests of information to the member service SukuHaku regarding digitized materials.

The requests for information can be sent by e-mail to seura@genealogia.fi. Replies to information requests will be made as quickly as possible in the midst of other customer service work.