3. A Channel for Publication

The Net-connection forges new, exciting links between the library and the community or, speaking in terms of extended literacy, between authors and audiences. The following are examples of the electronic publishing activities of the members of the cooperative society Katto-Meny, the library's main partner in the project:

Helsinki City Library

http://www.kaapeli.fi/~hkk/

Susanna Sucksdorff, the information secretary of the City Library, maintains WWW-pages with information on each of the library's 35 branches, opening hours, special events etc. Information is provided in Finnish, Swedish and English.

The catalogue of the library (LIBS) is not yet available as an OPAC on the Net. However, the first steps have been taken to this end. enable public access to the catalogue via Internet.

Electric Verse

http://www.kaapeli.fi/~nvl/sahsarc.html

This is a net-anthology, combining original text, translations, sound and pictures, of Finnish and Finland-Swedish poetry. More precisely, the contributions to the anthology come from members of the recently formed "The Living Poets' Society" (LPS) which has rapidly gathered a membership of several hundred people, including many of the leading young names. The goal of the society is to promote the distribution and reading of poetry. (See a version of the Electric Verse home page in Appendix 1 of the printed report.)

Journals of opinion

http://www.kaapeli.fi/~kultti/

The umbrella organisation of Finnish cultural, political etc. journals (The Kultti-association) has published basic information on all of its members (i.e. the journals). Some of the members have their own home pages with additional links to tables of content, order forms etc.

NetComics Weekly

http://www.kaapeli.fi/~sarjaks/

The contributions to NetComics Weekly is produced by artists of the Finnish Comics Association. The Association has also donated its significant collection of comic books to the Cable Book-branch of Helsinki City Library.

Information-service on the European Union

http://www.kaapeli.fi/eu.html

The need to create WWW-pages on the European Union became obvious during the campaigns (for or against) which preceded the referendum on Finland's membership in the EU. Some of the most active groups on the issue wished to to publish their materials electronically as well, via the Knot at the Cable. However, the EU-pages also holds links to the "I'm Europe"-server of the EU, and to various other sources of information.

Hurrarnet

http://www.kaapeli.fi/~hurrarna/

The name "Hurrarnet" is built on an abusive word ("hurrit"), which has sometimes used by some Finnish-speaking Finns about the ca six percent of the Finnish people who have Swedish as their mother tongue ... But, the Finland-Swedes themselves have lately realized that "Hurrare is beautiful", and are now exploiting the word for their own purpose: to weave a web of Finland-Swedish net-resources to the benefit of a growing number of Swedish-reading and -writing net-users. The Swedish Cultural Foundation, among others, supports the Hurrarnet-project. One of its first expressions is the Hurrarnet page at the Knot at the Cable.

Community links

By "community links" we mean the Net-connection of a growing number of non-governmental organisations, publishers and municipal institutions. The Net-connection signifies computer-mediated communication by email, mailing lists, newsgroups as well as World Wide Web-publishing. As a rule, the information is provided, designed and updated by the members/partners themselves. Due to the decentralized nature of the World Wide Web the information providers may sometimes prefer to place their information on other servers, or to move it to their own offices, if they decide to set up own Internet-nodes. They can then easily have their information linked to the library via Knot at the Cable. (This is the case with, for instance, the Finnish section of the Service Civil International.)

Individual publications

Authors. Finlandia-prize winning author Leena Krohn contributes essays and fiction to the "library without walls" from her home page at the Knot at the Cable.

Literary Critics. The critic Tuva Korsström and her publisher Söderströms &Co have provided the files containing Berättelsernas återkomst (The Return of the Stories), i.e. in-depth-interviews with fifteen European novelists. Of course, this work is also available as a book in print.

Film. - Movie director Jari Halonen arranged an Internet presentation of his new production "Lipton Cockton in the Shadows of Sodoma" at Knot at the Cable.

Zagreb Diary. - In his net-distributed diary Dutch activist Wam Kat looks at events in former Yugoslavia from a grass-roots perspective; "The Peace Station" contributes a Finnish translation by email.

Human Rights. - Journalist Mika Nyman uses his home page at the Knot at the Cable to provide hyper-text links to information sources on human rights issues.