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Library User Guide for New University Staff

Welcome to the Turku University Library, one of the largest academic libraries in Finland. The library supports the research, education, and studying of the university's multidisciplinary scholarly community. We facilitate the university's profile and strengths.

Finding and using library materials

How to locate library resources

You have access to vast and high-quality resources for research, teaching, and studying through the library. You can find the resources via

E-resources are available through the University of Turku's network and via remote access. Remote access is available for students and staff of the university with a UTU account. Resources requiring login information will ask for it automatically.

If you cannot find what you are looking for in the library collections, please check out if there are any open access resources available or turn to the library's interlibrary loans services for help.

More information on the library's website.

Suggest new resources

We welcome acquisition requests for new resources. Based on the library's information resources policy we will primarily acquire e-resources. If the library is unable to acquire an electronic version of the resource, or if there are particular reasons for acquiring a printed copy instead of an e-resource, the library can still purchase printed resources as well.

Explore e-resources on trial runs and suggest new ones

The library is constantly taking new interesting and useful resources on trial runs and you can influence the acquisition process with your feedback.

You can also suggest new resources that you would like to try out, if you happen upon an interesting e-resource. Please contact us at hankinta@utu.fi and we will start to investigate!

Join a training session or study independently

Join a training session

Were you aware that the library offers free training sessions on various subjects for everyone from undergrads to post-doc researchers at the University of Turku? Our training sessions cover essential competence areas, which help you to

  • strengthen you information seeking and management
  • obtain more information on available resources and
  • increase visibility and impact of your research.

Check out our trainings and come along!

Library training guide

Request a tailored training session

If you would like a session that is more tailored to your needs, please don't hesitate to contact us at library@utu.fi and let's prepare one together!

In addition to trainings, we are happy to offer short information or discussion sessions for example in thesis seminars, faculty meetings etc.

Get acquainted with library guides

You can find answers to many questions and situations from library guides, so if you need

Lighten your research process and choice of publishing channels

Research data management and opening data

A Research Data Guide has been produced to support data management. University-level principles and guidelines can be found in the University of Turku's data policy.

The library supports data management planning by advising and training researchers and by maintaining the DMPTuuli tool for data management planning.

Library can help

  • planning your data management and developing a data management plan (DMP)
  • opening research data
  • opening metadata describing the research data
  • finding a suitable data repository
  • using CC licences
  • complying with funder's requirements for open data
  • establishing a data management policy

The Library coordinates the Basics of Research Data Management course, which is part of the UTUGS studies.

For advice, please contact openutu@utu.fi.

Reference management

You can use various reference management software to help you create in-text citations and bibliographies. With reference management programs you can easily collect and manage the literature sources you use in your research.

Library offers training and independent study packs for RefWorks and Mendeley reference management programs. More information in the Reference management guide.

Keeping current with research news

Many databases and services offer various tools for tracking research news, publications related to your research topic, or even the citations of your own article.

Library's Keeping up guide provides guidance and tips on

  • how to follow science news and new publications
  • how to facilitate access to full texts of articles
  • how to create news feeds and search alerts directly to your desktop or email
Innovations and patents

The library can help you find information on patented technology in your field or find out more about commercialising your inventions from patent information sources. We also organise patent search training courses.

More information in the Patents guide.

Publish your research results

Open Access publishing

Library agreements may include discounts on author fees or the possibility of free open access. Agreements are publisher-specific.

In the library's guides we have compiled information on how you can achieve open access for scientific publications in accordance with the University of Turku's publication policy and research funders recommendations:

For advice, please contact kirjasto@utu.fi.

Publishing your doctoral dissertation

You can publish your doctoral dissertation in the university's Annales series, in another series of the university, or as a single monograph. It can also be published outside the university, for example with a commercial publisher. If the publisher allows it, you can deposit your dissertation in the university's UTUPub repository as an Open Access parallel publication.

Doctoral Dissertations at the University of Turku: guidelines for dissertation defence, upcoming dissertation defences, and University of Turku Graduate School UTUGS.

Library is responsible for:

UtuPub Publication Archive

Other university publications can also be published through the library's publication archive UtuPub. It also publishes theses of undergraduate students. For more information, see the Publishing in the UTUPub Publication Archive page.

ISBNs

The library also issues ISBNs for University of Turku doctoral theses and other publications.

For advice, please contact julkaisut@utu.fi.

Current research information system UTUCRIS

UTUCRIS research information system is used to manage the metadata collected on research (e.g. publication data), to maintain researchers' profile information (e.g. areas of expertise, research, teaching) and to record research and professional merit.

It is the researcher's responsibility to check each year, by January at the latest, that all publications from the previous year have been recorded in the system. The Library records part of the information on international publications directly in the Research Information System by searching international databases. Researchers can enter their missing publication data directly into the Research Information System themselves, or they can report them using the publication data declaration form. We also store parallel copies of publications alongside publication information.

UTUCRIS research information system guide contains instructions on how to report publication information, maintain profile data, self-archive publications and create an ORCID researcher identifier.

Data entered into the Research Information System can be searched on the University of Turku's public research portal.

For advice, please contact researchportal@utu.fi.

Research evaluation based on scholarly publications

Library metrics services help

  • assessing the quality of a single publication channel
  • creating a researcher profile for ORCID, Web of Science or Scopus
  • responsible use of publication data for researcher and research assessment
  • retrieval of citation data, interpretation of h-indexes, use of journal metrics
  • use of the Publication Forum

The library offers training sessions on tools for evaluation of publications.

More information in the guide for Evaluation based on scientific publications.

Metrics services can be reached at kirjasto@utu.fi.

Using the library and contact information

Borrow and visit the library

Welcome to visit the library, on-site or online!

See locations, contact information, opening and service hours of the library units.

The Welcome to the Library page has all the instructions on, for example, getting a library card; using the library resources; borrowing, renewing and reserving materials; and making storage requests.

Customer service is also available online by sending a message to the service address library@utu.fi.

Using various library premises

The library's versatile premises are in principle open to everyone! 

See more information on the open and reservable library premises and the colour coding depending on the area's purpose of use and silence level.

Contact information and feedback

Contact the library via library@utu.fi or use the feedback form. We look forward to hearing from you!