[billfruit]

Also it appears to me the same space could be utilized to stock much more books, which in my eye what a library should be continually striving to do. In general what makes libraries great are the size of their stock, the comprehensiveness and accebility of the catalogues and indexes, and presence of help-full librarians.

[sjagoe]

I was expecting more space for books when I visited Oodi for the first time as well, but I don't think the limited shelf space in this library isn't such a big issue because of the other libraries in the city. The Helsinki region libraries (http://www.helmet.fi/en-US/) all form a single network. You can reserve a book, and collect it at your most convenient branch.