Enesekirjastus

Enesekirjastus is a Finnish term used to describe the practice of creating and maintaining a personal library of resources. It encompasses books, articles, media, and other digital or physical materials gathered for individual learning, research, or reference. The concept emphasizes self-directed curation, portability, and long-term access, often outside formal public or institutional libraries.

The word is not widely standardized in library science. It appears mainly in informal discussions and digital knowledge-management contexts. In this usage, enesekirjastus overlaps with ideas such as personal knowledge management and digital archiving, where individuals select, organize, annotate, and preserve materials for themselves and, in some cases, for sharing with trusted networks.

Core practices include setting selection criteria (quality, relevance, rights), creating and maintaining a coherent organization system, tagging or annotating items to improve searchability, digitizing analog materials where possible, and choosing storage solutions with regular backups. Attention to licensing and copyright is central when materials are digitized or distributed.

The approach supports lifelong learning and research continuity, especially in environments with changing access to institutional resources. It also raises considerations about privacy, data management, and the effort required to maintain up-to-date collections.

See also: personal knowledge management, digital curation, personal archiving.