From the Departing Vice-President

Personal Reflections on BETH

Abstract

My first BETH meeting was in Nice, back in 2010. My institution, the Theology Library at the University of Helsinki, had joined BETH but soon after that it ceased to exist, becoming part of the central Helsinki University Library. Since 2012, my new job in the brand-new Kaisa house has had nothing to do with the acquisition of theological materials. After the integration of nineteen faculty libraries, both large and small, the Helsinki University Library became, little by little, step by step, a great digital library trying to satisfy the needs of tens of thousands of users. We still have our collections of printed books, but the future belongs to the digital library with its great variety of connections to all available knowledge and research. Clearly, my institution is now quite different to how it was back in 2010. But BETH has also changed significantly in these years.