Playground Loru will be moved to the third floor of Oodi and the pram parking area will be expanded

Services for families with children at Central Library Oodi will be improved when Playground Loru is moved from the first floor to the children’s section balcony on the third floor on Monday 18 November 2019. The amount of pram parking space will also be increased in connection with this change.

When services intended for families with children are located close to each other, the library staff and the personnel at Playground Loru will be better able to work together. The balcony on the third floor is also a warmer and cosier space for the littlest customers at Oodi than the first floor.

Customer feedback was taken into consideration when making this change by holding two meetings and creating an online survey in the autumn of 2019. All of the 300 responses to the survey were reviewed carefully and used as a basis for improvements to services for those visiting Oodi with prams.

The amount of pram parking space will the doubled once the space is moved to the third floor, because people felt that the current space was too small. New pram parking areas will be opened in the southern and northern ends of the first floor. Each parking area will be designated by rugs and a sign that reads P. All pram parking areas will be accompanied by seating for dressing children.

Towards the end of the year, the pram parking areas on the first floor will be equipped with stands that can be used to secure the prams using customers’ own locks. Architects will be designing lockable lockers that can be operated with a library card, near the pram parking areas on the first floor. The lockers can be used to store small bags or children’s winter clothes, for example. The lockers will be installed in Oodi in the spring of 2020.

Approximately 9,000 people visit Oodi daily. This number includes seniors, school children, students and tourists, to name a few. There may be hundreds of children of different ages in Oodi at any given time, for example. The library is intended for everyone, and we want to take all user groups into account when designing our spaces.