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Making the Most of your Library - a guide for English lecturers
Introduction
This guide is intended to answer the most common questions asked by HE English lecturers about library services. It will be particularly
helpful to new lecturers and to those taking on a special responsibility for liaison with the library.
Library services have been and are going through a period of rapid change and development. They are no longer store-houses of printed information accessed via a catalogue, but rather gateways to dispersed collections in both print and electronic form, accessed via many different search and retrieval tools. Yet despite the growing prevalence of e-books, e-journals and web-based information, libraries are still a physical place where students and researchers expect to be able to find the materials they need and study them in an appropriate environment.
Libraries and English - a special relationship
As a text- based discipline, English has a special affinity with libraries. The monograph is still as important as the journal article and primary texts are usually read in print rather than electronic form. For English students, the library figures in their learning experience more markedly than for other disciplines. The library is the laboratory for English students.
Trends
The English Subject Centre has therefore taken seriously concerns raised in the community about declining standards in the provision of materials for its students. As libraries struggle to fund the spiralling cost of science and technology journals and move towards electronic delivery, there is a fear that the more traditional book-based services needed by humanities students are being squeezed. To a large extent the quality of a library service is dependent on the resources its institution puts into it, and this is a matter which it is difficult to address from outside. Libraries are also affected by trends in what is now a global publishing market with pricing and formatting decisions being taken by multi-national companies for whom UK universities, let alone the English studies community within them, represent only a small fraction of their sales revenue.
Yet despite the fact that things like trends in global publishing and library funding are beyond its influence, the English Subject Centre felt that there was much to be gained by improving the liaison and understanding between libraries and English academics. It is for this reason that this guide has been produced.
About this guide
The guide does not supplement in any way those which individual libraries produce about their own services and collections. Rather it tries to answer some of the ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ in a way that indicates the possible or most commonplace answers in a way that will make lecturers better informed and more confident about approaching the librarians in their own institution. (NB: throughout this guide we refer to ‘libraries’ and ‘librarians’ but use this to include the variants such as ‘Learning Resources Centre’ and ‘Information Advisers’.) These information is therefore necessarily generalised, but we have tried to indicate who and what to ask at your own library.
We appreciate any feedback on how this guide might be improved.
Please contact: esc@rhul.ac.uk.
