Antti Virrankoski comments
When I became a Head of Services for the Library of Parliament in 2016, I had been working for the University of Helsinki’s libraries for over a decade, spending my last years there as head of the local services in the Kumpula campus library. My background is in geography and I later sought supplementary training in library science and managerial tasks.
The Library of Parliament operates at the heart of government and is, unquestionably, one of the most highly valued libraries in Finland. The appointment as Director of the Library is definitely the high point of my career and it is a great honour for me to follow Sari Pajula, Erika Bergström and all the other Directors who have preceded me in this task in the library’s more than century-long history.
It is extraordinary to direct a library that has accumulated so much skill, expertise and experience in terms of its staff. The dedicated attitude and commitment as servants of democracy is tangible everywhere in the library, and it makes this Director feel most humble in his new task.
The task is to serve the library to the best of one’s ability so that the library serves others to the best of its ability.