The Ministry of Education and Culture outlines library policy and prepares legislation on libraries for Parliament. The Ministry's work in the library field is governed by aims set in the Government Programme, and in:

• Finnish Library Policy 2015. National strategic areas of focus has been published. It defines the direction and objectives of the activities in Finnish public libraries.It provides a foundation for proposing regulations and government financing. The purpose of the program is to update previouslibrary programs and strategies set forth by the Ministry of Education and Culture to correspond with upcoming changes in the operations environment.
  
• Library Development Program 2006 -2010
  Clarifies the future role and significance of the library and associates the library more closely as a central actor within the regions and as part of the robust provincial areas.
  
• Library Strategy 2010
  Presents visions and objectives regarding access to knowledge and culture, identifies challenges and development needs, details measures geared to secure information services for all, and determines the roles of local authorities and the government in library affairs.
  
• Library policy programme 2001-2004
  Contains proposals concerning the role of libraries in civil information society. The programme also provided the basis for the Library Strategy.

Municipal public libraries

In Finland the guiding principle in public libraries is to offer free access to cultural and information sources for all irrespective of their place of residence and financial standing.

The use of library collections at the library and borrowing are free of charge. The interlibrary loans given by the central public library and provincial libraries are free.

Public libraries are run by local authorities who also determine the extent of services provided. Local authorities receive statutory state aid for operating a library based on a unit price per inhabitant, which is calculated from real library expenditure in all municipalities every four years. The local authorities allocate funds to libraries at their discretion. The more the municipalities spend in average library affairs, the bigger the government subsidy in average is.

In addition to these statutory government grants, the Ministry of Education and Culture supports the establishment of libraries and acquisition of mobile service busses. Ministry also allots discretionary subsidies to libraries mainly out of pools and lottery funds for special tasks (Multilingual Library, Saami Library, Co-Nordic mobile services) and different projects (e.g. development of information network). During the past couple of years the Ministry of Education has especially supported projects jointly carried out by libraries or in cooperation with other administrative sectors.

Research and other libraries

The Ministry of Education grants funds to universities and polytechnics for the operations of their research libraries, which each institution can allocate at its discretion.

Celia - the Library for the Visually Impaired and the Repository Library are government-owned libraries, whose mission is laid down in legislation and in Ministry of Education orders.

The administration, financing and activities of research and polytechnic libraries are decided by the organisation in question.

The activities of other libraries are determined by the organisation which they serve.