Learn Finnish: Vanhat asiakirjat eivät ole enää saatavilla tässä arkistossa. - The old documents are no longer available in this archive.

It comes from the verb saada (to get). We form the passive present participle, saatava (to be gotten), and put it in the plural adessive case, giving us saatavilla. Literally, it translates to "on the things to be gotten," but it functions as the standard fixed expression for "available."

The current lesson mentions both -tavilla and -tavissa. Could I use saatavissa here?

Yes, they are mostly interchangeable when talking about availability. However, saatavilla is much more common for general or physical availability, such as documents in an archive or products in a store. Saatavissa is sometimes preferred for abstract availability, like a goal being achievable.

Since this is a negative sentence, why isn't the subject vanhat asiakirjat in the partitive case?

The rule that negative sentences require the partitive applies primarily to the object of the sentence or the subject of an existential sentence (a sentence stating that something exists somewhere). This is a standard predicative sentence describing the subject's state, so the subject vanhat asiakirjat stays in the nominative plural.

What are the roots of the compound word asiakirjat?