The department maintains a library with large collections of literature in Computer Science. The library is managed jointly with the University Computing Centre and is mainly used by the staff and advanced students of the department.
Established in 1967, the library now holds nearly 50,000 volumes of literature. The annual cumulation is about 2,000 monographic titles (books, reports) and 300 journal subscriptions. In Finland, the collections of this library are probably the best in the field of computer science.
The floor area of the library is 408 sq. meters including a reading room of 60 seats. Admission to the premises is free and collections are freely available to all visitors. Home loans, however, are restricted to the faculty and advanced students.
The library subscribes to most major international journals in computer science and acquires a majority of the most important computer science books and conference publications.
An important part of the collections consists of technical reports that are acquired as exchanges. The department maintains mutual exchange arrangements with about 130 research centers and university departments, in Europe and North America.
To help users search and locate the required literature, the library maintains an on-line database of its holdings. The database includes material acquired since 1982, classified according to the CR Classification System of the ACM. The database now contains nearly 30,000 bibliographic records, representing approximately 75% of the total holdings.
The library staff includes two full-time employees, one librarian and one secretary, who are assisted in their work by a library committee comprising of several members of the faculty.