I was interviewed earlier in the year about Colindale, where I spent many hours researching my PhD. As someone with a foot in the historians camp, and a foot in the digital world (and no, they’re not exclusive!) our conversation was wire-ranging. I’ll be interested to see which bits appear:
Read more about the programme, and listen in tomorrow 11am, or afterwards on iPlayer (as I will be doing).
Academic libraries cannot do everything. They rely on their universities’ explicit support and resources – but the investment is smart. Universities rely on alumni to be their ambassadors, and the provision of services that keep them connected both generates goodwill and equips them to be more effective on behalf of their alma mater. The ivory towers are imaginary: the academy cannot separate itself from the fate of its local community, its alumni, or wider society. “The library is the heart of the university” is the inscription that greets visitors to our main library. Increasingly, we hope, it will also beat strongly for lifelong learners in our hometown, among our alumni, and in the global community.
Read full story, especially encouraging is the idea that we continue community/relationship with people who have attended university, but also the local community – as Universities are battered on all sides, we have to think differently about how we demonstrate relevance.
Think digitally and steer academics away from their ‘cravings’, librarians are told. Hannah Fearn writes
University librarians have been told that they must change the behaviour of academics to “stop them craving books” as libraries shift their focus to digital resources.
The call was made at a debate about the future of university libraries, hosted by Times Higher Education at the British Library last week.
Debating the motion “Is the physical library a redundant resource for 21st-century academics?”, Sarah Porter, head of innovation at the Joint Information Systems Committee, said she knew some scientists who had not set foot in a library for five years.
The University of Bath pioneered all-day opening during term-time when its library was refurbished in 1996.
Gavin Rea, the deputy librarian, said that for the past two years “it has been open 24 hours a day for 365 days a year, as many overseas students are unable to go home for Christmas”.
Since the library security desk doubles as the university reception, and there is sometimes only a single member of staff on duty, the extra expense comes to less than £20 an hour at night-time, he added.
Although he admitted that late-night occupancy can be “very low”, or dominated by overseas students using computer facilities to contact home, Mr Rea stressed the “unbelievable flexibility” that the policy offers students. They can “spontaneously turn up and do a couple of hours’ work when the mood takes them”.
Read full story. At the University of Winchester, we give out swipe cards on a 24 hour basis which can be used to access one of the open-access computing areas (most first year students, however, live in networked areas of the campus), but the library isn’t really required all night.
University of Brighton Libraries . St Peter’s House contains many relevant books and back-issues of many journals. The most useful I found was ‘Art and Industry‘, a contemporary journal, which includes many articles about the posters produced during the war.
The University of Bath pioneered all-day opening during term-time when its library was refurbished in 1996.