It takes a shopping center to raise a child - Library develops at the Service Square

Dynamic partnership is the keyword to the Service Square which opens in 2016 in Espoo, Finland. The Service Square will be located in the expansion of Iso Omena shopping center. Library Apple, with 3000 daily visitors, will move and the number of visitors will grow. There will be many partners in the Service Square such as citizen services, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland, the maternity and child health clinic, health center, youth and mental health services. The library will be situated amongst these different partners. Health and welfare are the main goals for our future library. The current children’s section is already aiming to support parenthood, strengthen interaction and linguistic development, as well as promoting reading and media education and the use of new technology. Enabling encounter and free play will be even more important in the Service Square, where facilities for that will be more advanced. Library Apple aims to offer a safe, activating and non-commercial surrounding for young people. We have asked for teens to share their opinion and suggestions about the new library. We work closely with shopping center staff, youth services and the police. Several ICT-projects have been launched with Espoo City libraries to figure out the key operation models that could succeed when reproduced at a new library. One aspect of this particular pilot project is the co-operation with local schools and music institutes as the customership of children and teenagers is always essential for the future. New technology like 3D-printing is already especially attractive to our younger customers.