Regional development services AKEpampas develops libraries in Ostrobothnia, Middle Ostrobothnia and Southern Ostrobothnia. We have noticed that there are many libraries in our district which locate in or near elementary school, yet many of them haven’t focused their interior design for children. To enhance library spaces to become more child friendly, we decided to ask for this grant to find new ideas, to change the way of thinking how libraries should be designed in children’s point of view.
Our project began with a visit to Children’s library in Billund Municipality in Denmark. The head librarian Christian Hansen gave us a tour and introduction to the library space. The multifunctional building was originally built in the 1970’s but was renovated in 2016. Architect agency Rosan Bosch designed the interiors after many work groups that had been organized with the citizens and customers to find out what kind of space answers to the needs of library users. The renovation of the library space (1 100 m2) cost approximately 1000 000 euros but half of it was paid by LEGO (LEGO company is in Billund and there is also Legoland and Laland, so the village is constructed on the idea of children’s play) in the municipality of 7 300 occupants. Billund has a lot of immigration, but the immigrants are highly educated, and they move to Billund for work. The head library is 15 kilometres from Billund in a town called Grindsted and there are also two libraries which are open with volunteer workers (they oversee logistics but don’t have access to the customer registers). There are five librarians and pedagogues working in Billund library.
Year 2024 there was 75 093 library visits in children’s library, and the number of loans was 31 667. Library uses 200 000€ per year for books and 110 000€ on e-books. The library has some physical magazine prescriptions which have reduced to half and mainly available on e-material. Denmark has national e-library just as Finland does and every year, they use more money on e-books than on paper books. The collection is mainly for children but there is a small amount of material for adults as well. All the four libraries in Billund municipality have all the one and same collection so books circulate between four libraries and only the head library has a book storage, where other libraries can make reservations from. The library law in Denmark has regulated that libraries of Denmark should provide culture and technology and this shows very strongly in Billund. The municipality gives the library each year 10 000€ to provide professional theatre shows for children, also they offer space for volunteer groups to provide activities and educate themselves via book groups, knitting café’s, 3D-printing clubs and digital guidance for senior citizens, one of the three 3D printers is owned by the library. Clubs have free storage space from library where they can keep all the material, they need for various clubs. In the library space is the meeting room which includes presentation technology. The main idea of children’s library is to teach children to learn through play (you can read about more from here) and customers can play with technology and Lego’s. Library space is open on self-service time each day from 7 am to 10 pm. From Monday to Friday, you can find staff from 10 am to 4 pm but the staff isn’t sitting behind a desk waiting for someone to enter, they use their time to develop, planning, organizing and producing events and co-operation with regional actors. If customer needs help, they can press on the bell on the front desk and staff will come to offer them service. Once a month there is staff on Saturday when they have organized event for child customers and most of the activity is bought from an event provider instead of trying to organize everything by themselves. The children’s library gives a lot of effort for networking with regional organizations and clubs and self-service also in picking up reservations with a code number from reservation shelf.
Theme of the library is a desert, and one can climb on the mountains, hide in the termite nest, slide down from an island and cosy up on a sofa in the ocean. Every shelf and playground have been utilized as a display for book covers to enhance loaning. The sealing is covered with acoustic boards to reduce noise of the library space. Library has received two arcade games as a donation and the donator provides the maintenance of the games for free. So, what is the subject that customers need most help for in the self-service environment? It is the universal problem called printing and copying machine, there are four computers for customers where they can use internet and print documents. Library is spacious and very bright because two walls are mainly glass and the roof is filled with skylights. There are various places for reading and to spend time around the library.
So how do the staff persuade children to read and loan more? They offer book tasting, where books are placed over a table next to wine glasses filled with different nonalcohol-drinks which represent the story of the book and while child is tasting the drink, librarian introduces the book. They also loan bookbags to daycare centres with various themes, the loan duration is two and a half month and then the bags are changed into new ones. The input to enhance literacy is vast to children of all ages and the library organizes two different book clubs for children to lure them into active reading. Children in homeschooling uses library services actively but in Denmark every school has their own library and the children’s library has tight collaboration with them. Students come to the library regularly and library offers destructed activities for example Storytime during their visit. The strategy is to increase loans and library visits.
After the visit
After all the inspirational ideas we had from our visit to the children’s library, we collected a presentation and organized a webinar via Teams to anyone who works in library services, where we gave an introduction to the library. Webinar took place in 9/17 2026, and the number of participants was 41.
After our own presentation, we had a guest speaker to educate how to transform an old library space into a children’s book haven. We asked Rosan Bosch to give a speech of the project, but the price was over our budget, and we came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t give any more value to the presentation. Instead, we asked an Interior architect Päivi Meuronen to give a presentation of the libraries she has been making interior designing in Apila-kirjasto in Seinäjoki, Turku City Library and Fyyri in Kirkkonummi. She lectured on what kind of details should be considered when thinking of children as library users. The height of shelves, textures, colours, staircases, slides, sound insulation board to muffle all the loud noises and the opportunities to reform the space to different needs. When Meuronen was developing Seinäjoki, Turku and Kirkkonummi libraries she had meetings with resident associations for the planning of the library space. During those meetings she wanted to contact the future library users into planning the space to answer the needs of library customers, just as Rosan Bosch did. Meuronen also gave answers to the questions of how to complete the same idea in smaller libraries with smaller budgets, there was also discussion on what kind of response the library users have given about the space. Our presentation begun with a short introduction video, which we filmed in the library and our presentation was made as power point slideshow. Main structure of our presentation was all the pictures of the insights we made during our visit. We had very good discussions on how to give book tips in Finland.
The reason why we made this trip and the webinar, was to inspire librarians in Finland, to pick up all the good ideas on how to bring all the good ideas to life in Finland as well. Our main focus group was the librarians and chefs whose libraries are near or in school buildings or daycare centres. Via our webinar we reached many who worked in our focus group.
Lived and learned:
During our visit we learned how customer service can be effortlessly provided without being all the time available waiting for customers to come, when librarians can use more of their time to develop the library services, and make more contacts to regional co-operations. Billund library relies much on self-service and is set on to be the place where the community can spend their time and enjoy literature, art, music and education.
We were surprised to hear that each school in Denmark has their own libraries, when public libraries work together with schools instead of providing individual service to pupils. The library still offers guided visits to classes.
It was a joy to notice how much effort is put to place book covers on display and also to make the library space inviting. Nevertheless, the library web is similar to what we have in Finland, Denmark has an advanced way of thinking in offering job places to volunteer workers in order to keep library services working with minimum effort from educated professionals.
We used the planned time sufficiently and learned much more than we could have hoped for. It seems that Denmark invests more money in library services than Finland and the emphasis is on diversity in cultural education.
