VISITORS TO Oodi (meaning “ode”), Helsinki’s new central library, will find few books on its shelves: since it opened in December, a staggering 70% of the 100,000-odd collection has been borrowed. “The children’s section was left completely bare,” says Anna-Maria Soininvaara, the library’s director. Around 420,000 people, equivalent to roughly 60% of the city’s population, visited the library in its first month. On a Tuesday afternoon, the building is heaving.

Finland poured €100m ($113.15m) into the project, built for the country’s centennial, and the result is a grand design of waves of glass and spruce. The first floor hosts a café, an auditorium and a cinema; the second has a reading room, recording studios and a gadgets store, where city-dwellers can rent power tools, sewing machines and even 3D printers. One room is occupied by preteens playing Fortnite, a popular video game. But the third floor is the most impressive of all. An atrium floods natural light over seemingly endless rows of low, white bookshelves. Murmurs of chatter fill the room.

Thanks to its glass walls, Oodi glows in the gloomy darkness of the Nordic winter. It sits on land that just a few hundred years ago was a toxic swamp so rancid that local residents complained to the Swedish king. Now the building stands as an ode to civic society, open from 8am to 10pm, close to the Helsinki Music Centre and Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art. Finnish libraries are mandated by a law that came into effect in 2017 to promote democracy, active citizenship and freedom of speech. Fitting, then, that it overlooks Parliament House.

It is a bold project, and one that stands out at a time when many libraries worldwide are cutting resources or closing completely. In Britain, Birmingham's £189m ($243.6m) library opened in 2013 to plenty of fanfare but soon ran into financial trouble. It had to cut its opening hours nearly in half to save money. Ms Soininvaara is relying on commercial partnerships to avoid a similar fate. Renting out event spaces at Oodi to universities, cultural organisations and businesses brings in a regular flow of cash.

The institution’s approach to its resources is sensible, too. The library keeps track of which facilities are used most, particularly which gadgets are rented and how much supervised help they require. If the novelty of 3D printers wears off, they will be replaced by something else. Book returns have been automated where possible: robots pile volumes onto trolleys that drive themselves to the correct shelves. Librarians need only stack the books in their relevant place, which frees them to concentrate on things like planning events, which are already proving a hit. On February 7th, the library hosted a free “Harry Potter” book night. Ms Soininvaara says the venue, which has a total capacity of 3,200 people, was “packed with witches and wizards”.

Most importantly, the library has created a space for citizens to spend time in the heart of Helsinki at no cost. Everyone is welcome, Ms Soininvaara says—so long as they behave. Sharply dressed creative types hammer away at their laptops next to pensioners enjoying an afternoon coffee. Sellers of the Big Issue, a homelessness-charity magazine, warm up from the freezing weather next to students preparing for exams. Prams line the length of a wall next to the children’s corner. A toddler clambers up onto the couch and plops herself down next to Ms Soininvaara. “Our goal is to break social bubbles,” Ms Soininvaara says, and she points to an art installation in the building’s staircase. Oodi is for everybody, it proclaims—the happy, the loud, the lonely and, of course, the curious.