I was at International Staff Services getting some training, and they suggested I go to the library and get a card, and an hour later I was still at the library getting a tour of their extensive stacks. It was amazing. They have 25km of bookshelves in three underground stories. Obviously it's not all spread out in a line - it's more like zig-zags of shelves. Maybe it works this way in the US, too, but the University of Turku's library is one of six in Finland that receives copies of everything published in Finland. Minutes of parliament meetings, Lidl grocery store ads, gossip magazines, textbooks used in schools, fiction books, EVERYTHING. Some of the less important stuff (like grocery store ads) they store off-site, but everything else is down there in those 25km of shelves.
I feel like I just stumbled upon this amazing tour. Just the smell of the place was incredible - books, books, and more books. Old books, even! They don't have so many so so old books, since the university is only about 100 years old and before that a fire destroyed the main library in Helsinki. But there were a few volumes that looked a little ancient. Here are some old textbooks from Finnish schools.
Coming from the UAE where everything in the education system is practically brand spanking new, it was quite a treat to walk into a library so steeped in BOOKS. I'll be carrying the memory of that smell around with me for days...and head back if I need another fix!
