Level One Study Area partially unavailable for use on 10th, 11th and 12th Dec

Starting on Monday 10th at 2pm and continuing on through Tuesday 11th and Wednesday 12th December half of the Level One Study Area will be unavailable for use as normal. The West side of the area is being used for the collection of gowns and taking of photos for the College's Winter graduation ceremonies.

The East side of the area will be available for student use as normal from 8am to 8pm on both days, with around 90 seats and 27 workstations accessible. Access to this side of the area will be via the doors leading to the internal staircase between what was formerly Café Amici & Barclays Bank.

Apologies for the inevitable inconvenience this will cause to students.

Reading Week

For most non-medical departments, 5th - 9th November will be reading week. The Main Library and all Medical libraries will be open as normal.

There will be special arrangements for ONE WEEK LOANS borrowed from The Main Library during this period. One Week Loans borrowed on the previous Thursday or Friday (1st & 2nd November) will be extended to be due back on Monday 12th November. Ordinary Loans and Short Loans will remain as normal.

Complete online access to Annual Reviews

The Library now has full online access to the current contents and archives of all Annual Reviews titles. Please note that they are available off-campus via the University's proxy server, and therefore must be accessed via the Library's A-Z list of e-journals off-campus for proxying to work.

New Director of Library Services

The new Director of Library Services, Emma Bull, took up her post on October 15th 2007. Emma has come from Royal Holloway where she has been Acting Librarian and before that she worked at Imperial College, with responsibility for information resources management within the library. She is a graduate of the University of Leeds, where she gained an honours degree in Geography. She also has a Postgraduate Diploma in Information Studies from the University of North London and a Diploma in Management from Birkbeck College.

Main Library summer refurbishment

Over the summer vacation there have been several projects underway to improve the facilities and environment within the Main Library. Completion date on all projects was set as 24th September 2007.

• public toilets - total refurbishment (completed )
• carrel desking - Law section (completed on time)
• partitioning of 1st Floor Science Reference area - creation of a quiet PC area (completed 1/10/07)
• cabling of 1st Floor Science reference Area (completed 10/10/07)
• 50 additional PCs 1st Floor Science Reference (completed 10/010/07)
• air-conditioning - Ground Floor PC cluster (installation in progress 2/10/07)
• new tables and chairs - Ground Floor Quiet Study Area (completed for Induction)

Regretfully not all work is on schedule and Main library management would like to apologise for the current noise levels and the general environmental standards in some of the areas on the first floor. We are taking every step we can to ensure work is undertaken out of hours where ever possible or that noise is kept to a minimum during opening hours. We expect the cabling to be completed by the end of this week i.e. 5th Oct.

Thank you for your patience.