Kotka City Library marked the Library Navigator’s six-month anniversary this week. Library director Mikko Vainio shared the results on Kirjastot.fi, including one estimate we had been reluctant to make ourselves: how much librarian time the service represents.

The Kyyti libraries have had an AI assistant since spring 2025. The first version was mainly a helpdesk. It answered questions about opening hours, library cards, events and services in dozens of languages. Patrons sent it around 40,000 questions in its first ten months.

Then, in March 2026, it changed jobs.

The Library Navigator, called Suosittelija in Finnish, works more like a reading adviser. Its recommendations draw on both the AI model and selections maintained by Kyyti’s librarians. It only suggests books that belong to the Kyyti collection, and it checks whether they are available.

Patrons can choose to share their loan history for more personal suggestions. If the first recommendation is wrong, the Navigator asks follow-up questions. Anyone who has tried to recommend a book knows that this is usually where the useful conversation begins.

The first six months

Since March, the Library Navigator has been available day and night. It has answered 6,867 questions from 2,689 patrons.

The recommendations are also sending readers back into the collection. New books already have displays, publicity and the advantage of being new. Older books are easier to miss, even when they are exactly what someone is looking for.

Mikko estimates that a trained librarian would need about 15 minutes for each consultation at this level. On that basis, the first six months represent at least four months of uninterrupted work. After allowing for ordinary breaks and holidays, he puts it closer to the work of two people. Over a year, the Navigator gives Kyyti’s 110 staff help roughly equivalent to two full-time colleagues.

No librarians disappeared when the Library Navigator arrived. Patrons simply gained another way to ask for help, including at times when the library is closed. Staff still do the work that needs a person, and books that might otherwise sit unnoticed are being found and borrowed.

It is teaching people how to use AI, too

We built the Navigator to help people find books. Patrons have found another use for it: practising how to talk to an AI.

They can try a vague request, see what comes back, add detail and decide whether the answer is any good. Getting a mediocre book suggestion is a fairly harmless way to learn that an AI needs clear instructions and should not be trusted automatically. The same judgement becomes more important when people use AI elsewhere.

We have found limits as well. Some patrons have ten years of loan history in Koha. Feeding that much information into a model can leave it struggling to make sense of the whole record. We do not have the problem fully solved yet, but we are working on it.

A face instead of a spinner

The Navigator began as an experiment. By its six-month anniversary, people were using it as a regular library service, mostly on their phones.

Game designer and graphic artist Sai Zhou redesigned the interface around that reality. The most noticeable addition is the Navigator’s avatar. While the system works, the character blinks, thinks and sometimes takes a sip of coffee.

A normal loading spinner would have done the technical job. The avatar does something slightly different: it shows that the conversation is still moving without making the user stare at a progress indicator. It feels closer to waiting while someone at the library desk considers a question.

The design is made for more than one library network. Each library can use its own colours and typography while keeping the same underlying service and character. The Kyyti version looks like it belongs to Kyyti. Another library’s version will look like theirs.

The Library Navigator is open to everyone at kyyti.finna.fi. It works on any device, and patrons can write in the language they prefer. No library card is needed. Logging in only adds recommendations based on the patron’s own loan history.

Read Mikko Vainio’s original post (in Finnish) on Kirjastot.fi.

We are featured again on kirjastot.fi, with good news!
Below is the English translation of the Finnish news post published on Kirjastot.fi on 25 July 2025

Kyyti Libraries’ AI trial succeeded – the service will be made permanent

At the beginning of March, the Kyyti Libraries’ home page launched a chat service intended for a limited trial period. The service operates entirely autonomously, powered by artificial intelligence.

The chat was trained to answer every question related to transactions and customer relations at Kyyti Libraries—practically in any language. It can provide up-to-date information about Kyyti Libraries’ services and events and can also recommend events tailored to the questioner’s wishes regarding location, content, target audience and timing.

The experiment, which ended in June, aimed to evaluate the AI’s capabilities, the functionality of the service, its costs and the demand for it.

Because of the new and unfamiliar features associated with the pilot, the chat service was not actively marketed. The designers’ imaginations turned out to be wilder than reality: the uncertainties did not materialise. Instead, Kyyti-Chat is reliable, gives correct information and is easy to use. Since the training phase, library staff have not had to intervene in its operation at all. No support requests have been needed, and no user manuals have been requested.

The service keeps itself up to date and aware of everything happening in the libraries.

The service has been embraced naturally. Despite minimal marketing, it is used quite extensively. On average, about thirty conversations are held every day of the week, during which three questions are asked. Each month the chat provides 2,500–3,500 answers. Since publication, it has already delivered roughly 16,000 responses.

Thanks to its positive reception, the quality of its answers and its low overall costs, Kotka City Library has signed an agreement to continue the service. Kotka Library will remain responsible for all development and costs as part of the library’s AI strategy.

The chat service meets the requirements of EU data-protection and AI regulations. Ethical aspects of AI were also considered in its design. The service makes no decisions on anyone’s behalf, does not require user identification and does not use or request personal data. It falls under the EU AI Regulation’s “Minimal-risk” category. The bot is also a kind of local service: the software and its servers are located in Google’s data centre in Hamina.

Further information:

Mikko Vainio, tel. 0 400 935 923