The wellness impacts of libraries are being made visible in a new regional project
The municipality of Janakkala is involved in a broad regional development project aimed at increasing understanding of the wellness impacts of libraries and developing ways to make them visible.
The Influential Library – Making Wellness Impacts Visible project is coordinated by the Lahti City Library, and it includes a total of 12 libraries from four provinces.
The background of the project is the need to produce researched and comparable information on the impacts of libraries on the well-being of individuals and communities. Libraries offer diverse services that support, among other things, literacy, inclusion, learning, and cultural vitality – but measuring these impacts has been challenging.
The project tests and develops a measurement system based on previous thesis work on the wellness impacts of Lahti’s local libraries. The aim is to create a nationally applicable model that can be used, for example, in municipal well-being reports and in the evaluation of library activities.
The research will be conducted during 2025–2026 and will include surveys of library customers, interviews, and collaboration with various stakeholders. The results will be shared both locally and nationally.
The Janakkala Library participates in the project through, among other things, steering group work, providing local material, and event collaboration. The project’s self-financing portion is realized through the work contributions of the library staff.
– The project is bold and welcome, as libraries have a socially recognized role and well-being work has been part of municipal operations for a long time. The results will serve all municipalities, says library and cultural director Jari Hjelm, who is part of the steering group.
The project offers the municipality the opportunity to deepen its understanding of the significance of library services and to develop operations to be even more impactful. At the same time, it strengthens regional cooperation and highlights the role of libraries as promoters of well-being.
More about the project. (In Finnish)