I had the opportunity to visit with staff at The National Library of Finland (Kansalliskirjasto) the week of September 16th. The National Library is one of the newest full members of the IIIF Consortium, officially joining in April 2025.
During the visit, I had the opportunity to meet with staff and participate in a panel discussion (18 September 2025), What is IIIF? The Images in Dialogue -project meets Martin Kalfatovic. In addition to my talk, there were three additional talks on IIIF in the Finnish landscape. The panel was attended by 44 people online and 22 in person. The session was introduced by Katja Hilska-Keinänen (Director of Services / Availability services, National Library of Finland) and other speakers included Susanna Eklund (National Library of Finland) on “The Finnish IIIF Landscape”, and Tuula Pääkkönen and Ronja Koistinen (National Library of Finland) speaking on the “The Images in Dialogue Project Status”.
IIIF work at the National Library has been supported by the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation. This work, much of which was highlighted in the panel discussion allows the Library to implement IIIF across the digital services it maintains (search services, digi.kansalliskirjasto.fi and Finna.fi) and will help the Library support a wide community of researchers and cultural heritage professionals.
Later in the day, there was a tea with senior staff, including Kimmo Tuominen (Director), Liisa Savolainen (Deputy Director), Nina Hyvönen (Director of Services, Metadata), and Johanna Lilja (Director of Services, Collections and Data). I was also given a tour of the library facilities by Liisa Savolainen. Thanks to Susanna Eklund (Project Manager of the Images in Dialogue project and IIIF-C representative) for organising the visit. My presentation from the panel discussion can be found here and there is also a recording of the panel discussion available here.
Visits to our IIIF-C members and implementers is a great way to talk with the staff doing the work to bring the power of IIIF to their digital assets for use and reuse around the world. The privilege of seeing the great collections and spaces of the National Library in person brought further appreciation of the ability of IIIF to those unable to visit the collections in person.