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Fennica - The Finnish National Bibliography

Here you can search directly from Fennica. In the search field above, you can search the entire content of the National Library search service without limiting it to Fennica.

This page contains search tips and shortcuts for the different materials in the Finnish National Bibliography Fennica.

Fennica is a database of the Finnish national imprint. It contains information on books, newspapers, series, maps, games, ephemera and online materials published in Finland since 1488.

Finnish music and note data can be found in Viola, the Finnish National Discography.

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Shortcuts to materials

Agents

The Agent search is used to find information on persons and corporate bodies associated with Finnish publications. You can search for publications, variant names (abbreviations, different name forms and transliterations) and ISNIs related to a specific agent.

Pre-publication metadata

Publishers provide pre-publication metadata to Fennica on new and upcoming publications before they are published. Pre-publication metadata is finalised into complete records after the publication arrives at the National Library. Records can often be identified as advance information is they lack holdings information (link to the online material or item that can be ordered into the special collections reading room).

You can view all pre-publication records here. If you want to exclude pre-publication records from your search, use the search phrase NOT ennakkotieto.

Online materials

Fennica also contains information on Finnish online materials. For copyright reasons, materials obtained as legal deposits are only available on separate legal deposit workstations. You can identify these materials from their Käytettävissä vapaakappalekirjastoissa link. The freely usable material can be identified from their Linkki verkkoaineistoon link. You can use these materials freely on your own device anywhere.

Digitised materials

The national collection is constantly digitised. Digitising of old newspapers has progressed from the earliest issues up to the first half of the 1940s. From 2017 onwards new issues have been digitised immediately. Many magazines have been digitised as far back as the mid-1940s. Books will be digitised by topic within the framework of different projects. As a rule, materials are in free use at the Digi service until the publication year 1939. More recent materials are available on legal deposit workstations or by logging in with the Haka ID issued by universities.

List of items missing from the National Collection

Fennica also contains a list of items missing from the National collection.

Limiting to Fennica in the search service

Search tips for advanced search

Also read the instructions for the search service.

Author/Role

The author may be a person or an entity. Roles include authors, journalists, translators and readers.

  • Author/role: oksanen sofi
  • Author/role: rikman kristiina kääntäjä
  • Author/role: kansaneläkelaitos

Title

Search by the name of the publication.

  • Title: siivouksen elämänmullistava taika
  • Title: Suomen ympäristökeskuksen toiminta- ja taloussuunnitelma

Combination of author and title

Enter the name of the author in the author/role field and the name of the work in the appropriate Title field.

  • Author: cajander, Title: runoelmia
  • Author: Valtiontalouden tarkastuskeskus, Title: Alkoholivalvonta

Subject

Use subject headings to search for publications by topic and genre terms by publication format or genre. You can use the YSO and YSO places vocabularies to select headings and the SLM vocabulary to select genre terms. You can also combine multiple search terms in the same search. Please note that the use of subject headings was introduced in Fennica in 1987, and there are only occasional subject headings in older material. Fennica also does not assign subject headings for fiction. If you are searching for older materials or fiction, search with other search elements, such as classification.

For more information on Fennica's content descriptions, see the National Bibliography Services Customer Wiki.

  • Subject: COVID-19
  • Subject memoirs visual artists

Classification

In the classification field, enter the UDK or PLC classification of what you are searching for. If you are searching for journals or series, use the UDK classification for serials.

For more information on Fennica's content description policies, see the National Bibliography Services Customer Wiki. A PLC classification is only given in Fennica for newly published non-fiction literature written in Finnish, Swedish or Sami. Other materials can be found under UDK classification.

  • Classification: 22/28
  • Classification: 809.454.1
  • Classification: 70.03