The Library will remain open 24/7 over Easter but there will be no library staff services Friday 29th March to Tuesday 2nd April, returning on Wednesday 3rd April. Books borrowed or renewed from Friday 22 March, will not be due for return or further renewal until Wednesday 17 April 2024 to take account of the Easter vacation period. If you’re on campus this holiday, take a look at Easter activities happening across campus.
Our inaugural Library Spark competition has been won by Emily Togut Cole and her idea for an outdoor library study space AKA ‘Library Lawn’. The final event was held on 20 March and you can find out more about the finalists, their ideas and a few words from our judges over on our Spark announcement page. We would like to celebrate all the ideas and share a bit more from the event, with photos taken by Subject Librarian Tom Rogers below:
Kate Robinson, University Librarian and Chair of our judging panel, introduces the event – held in 10E 0.18Our Library Spark winner, Emily, receives her certificate from our judges (left to right: Cassie Wilson (PVC Student Experience), Jimena Alamo (SU President), Emily Togut Cole, Kate Robinson (University Librarian), Matthew Wickens (Senior Lecturer)Certificates for our shortlisted participants. Our winner will receive £1,000 and our shortlisted entries £100
Emily Togut Cole presents her winning outdoor Library study space idea
A bright idea for bookable sound-proofed rooms for online interviews presented by Nick Bircher, Mizuki Asai, and Aman Taher
Left: our panel of judges ask our finalists one or two questions. Right: Luke Gruppo presents his idea for a Library occupancy tracking app
Left: a round of applause for presenters. Right: Edmund Dadge presents a plan for a green wall of plants in the Library
Left: Abi Hefferan presents the Cross-Faculty Makerspace idea which she submitted with Horatio Hamkins (currently on Placement in New York) Right: Will Lewis presents his plan for a research sharing space for departments
A packed audience included Library staff, mentors and friends of our finalists
Finally, a word of thanks to the Library Spark competition and event organisers, led by Sarah Ormes who successfully secured Student Experience Fund support for the competition. Sarah’s team mates included Alison Baud, Amelia Jedynak, Hilary Cooksley and David Stacey.
These can be found either by using the ‘browse by option’:
Or scrolling down the Sage Research Methods homepage:
Data Visualization
Data visualization enables you to create charts to use in presentations with a range of ‘categorical, hierarchical, temporal, spatial, and network’ options to do so. The module includes guided tutorials and practice data.
Doing Research Online
Learn online and digital research techniques with in-depth guides, videos and case studies.
Feedback
Let us know if you have found these resources useful by emailing us at library@bath.ac.uk.
Please be considerate to your fellow students during the revision and exam period by keeping noise to a minimum in the Library’s study areas on Levels 1, 3, 4 and 5.
Quiet study space is very popular at this time of year. We have more than 1,400 individual study spaces across all floors of the Library. Whilst these remain available for drop in use, we also have some bookable group work rooms for those who would like to study together. You can book these spaces in advance through Libcal.
Using e-books during the assessment period? Please remember to sign out or close your browser when finished, otherwise you might lock access for other readers if there are limits on how many can access the e-book at the same time.
You may find the following Library resources helpful:
Find Past exam papers Browse and access past papers via our online database.
Take a break! Taking a break can help improve memory, increase your energy, reduces stress, improve health, plus boost your performance and creativity. Keep an eye out for our ‘Take a break’ envelopes in the Library during revision week and the first week of exams.
Managing exam stress and ‘Read Well’ themed reading lists We’ve created some themed reading lists of resources you might want to draw on for managing exam stress and reading for wellbeing. You’ll find a display on level 2 and can view the Skills and Wellbeing list on our Library Lists system.
Finally, our colleagues at the Skills Centre have a great deal of support on offer via theSupport to prepare you for exams webpage. This include guides, blogs, 1:1 appointments, the Be Well app and much more.
Our Library’s ebook collections have been further enhanced this year with c18,000 new ebooks from the following Springer collections. These are largely frontfile additions for 2023. Many more 2023 titles will continue to be released and become available up until the end of the year. We also purchased the last of the Earth & Environmental Science backfiles we were missing, extending from 2010 back to 2005, enabling access to the full run of content 1969-2023.
Additionally, Springer Protocols for 2023 have also been purchased, with more than 3,600 new protocols already available.
By combining these latest ebooks with our existing Springer content, this gives us access to over 162,000 high quality scholarly ebook titles and more than 72,800 protocols. This is before you factor in thousands of items in full-text ‘preview’. Follow the links below to search across the subject specific collections or search for individual titles by keyword on our Library catalogue.
As we move into May, the promise of summer seems just around the corner and the end of the academic year is almost in sight. Before then, for many people the next few weeks will be among the most challenging of the year as we move into the examination and assessment period. In the Library we see just how hard our students work and often late into the evenings. To help you we will be promoting the quiet study areas in the Library and emphasising the importance of respecting each other during what can be a stressful period.
The Library team has also created a ‘Managing Exam Stress Library List’. You will find further information about this on Level 2 (opposite the Library Lift).
Whether your ‘go to’ study place is in the Library, your bedroom, the kitchen table or a café it is also really important that you take regular breaks.
Here are five key benefits of taking a break.
1. Enhances memory and focus 2. Raises energy levels 3. Reduces stress 4. Improves health 5. Boosts you performance and promotes creativity
During May you might find one of our ‘Take a Break’ envelopes on your study desk in the Library. These contain a few bits and bobs to remind you to take a break including a free sachet of tea or coffee and some great ideas to help you.
If you are lucky enough to pick up one of the Library ‘Take a Break‘ packs, then please spread the word by posting a photo on Instagram @unibathlib
#TakeABreak
Go on! Take Five and Give Yourself a Star
Good Luck with your exams from all the Library staff and let us know if we can help you library@bath.ac.uk
Please be considerate to your fellow students during the revision and exam period by keeping noise to a minimum in the Library’s study areas on Levels 1, 3, 4 and 5.
Quiet study space is very popular at this time of year. We have more than 1,400 individual study spaces across all floors of the Library. Whilst these remain available for drop in use, we also have some bookable group work rooms for those who would like to study together. You can book these spaces in advance through Libcal.
Using e-books during the assessment period? Please remember to sign out or close your browser when finished, otherwise you might lock access for other readers if there are limits on how many can access the e-book at the same time.
You may find the following Library resources helpful:
Find Past exam papers Browse and access past papers via our online database.
Take a break! Taking a break can help improve memory, increase your energy, reduces stress, improve health, plus boost your performance and creativity. Keep an eye out for our ‘Take a break’ envelopes in the Library during revision week and the first week of exams.
Managing exam stress and ‘Read Well’ themed reading lists We’ve created some themed reading lists of resources you might want to draw on for managing exam stress and reading for wellbeing. You’ll find a display on level 2 and can view the Skills and Wellbeing list on our Library Lists system.
Finally, our colleagues at the Skills Centre have a great deal of support on offer via theSupport to prepare you for exams webpage. This include guides, blogs, 1:1 appointments, the Be Well app and much more.
It’s Spring. Are you ready for the Library’s Great Bunny Hunt?
It’s nearly the vacation, and everyone needs a little downtime and some chocolate. Luckily, the Library team anticipated this might happen, and we have been busy planning a bit of both!
We are excited to announce this year’s Great Bunny Hunt, which will run from Monday 27 to Friday 31 March. Anyone can enter – all you have to do is find the bunnies hiding in the library.
Two bunnies will be released into the wild each day from Monday to Thursday, each with a unique Library location for you to find. With names like Austen, Kureishi and Atwood, it is no secret that our bunnies are keen readers and rather crafty. If you find one, you’ll need to answer a single question and if you are lucky, you can win some chocolate prizes. At the end of the week, all correct answers will be entered into a prize draw to win a golden bunny.
If you are in the Library, you might just come across one of our eight bunnies and if you do, shh! Please leave them in place for others. But the best way to find them is to look out for our daily clues.
You’ll find the clues opposite the lift on Level 2 of the Library, or you can follow us on Instagram @unibathlib
Bath’s history as a city that flourished in the age of slavery is put under the spotlight and explored in Alberta Whittle’s first Exhibition in a public museum- Dipping Below a Waxing Moon, The Dance Claims Us For Release.
Fresh from representing Scotland at the Venice Biennale, Alberta Whittle (b.1980) will present a suite of newly commissioned sculptures across the Holburne Museum’s site and grounds, as well as a series of new text-based works across Bath.
The exhibition, examines 18th-century histories; especially those shared by the Ball’s Plantation in her native Barbados which was owned by Guy Ball.
On permanent show at the Holburne Museum is a 1722 ledger from a 400-acre sugar plantation in Barbados owned by Guy Ball, the great-grandfather of the Holburne Museum’s founder, Thomas William Holburne. Disconcertingly, at some point 150 pages have been removed, leaving only one legible section, leaving us to wonder was somebody trying to hide something?
Alberta Whittle’s new works for this exhibition confront and examine the uncomfortable elements of the Holburnes’ past. Whittle was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, and is very familiar with the area where the Ball’s Plantation had been located. In 2019 she even wrote an epitaph for those who had died while working there.
The nucleus of this exhibition was the plantation ledger which the Holburne has in their collection. I was really curious about the relationships between plantations, the built environment and the story of Bath, but also the story of colonialism in the Caribbean. I’m from Barbados, and the plantation from which this ledger would have come is not far from me – it’s in the same parish.It’s no longer a working sugar plantation, but it’s somewhere I’m quite familiar with
Alberta Whittle
The Limbo is one of the subjects explored in the exhibition. The limbo is one of the most well known, yet widely misunderstood, symbols of Caribbean culture. The famous dance, where a participant contorts their body to pass under a horizontal bar which is progressively lowered towards the ground, is often seen as a symbol of Caribbean culture Its roots, however, derive from the forced activities of enslaved Africans during their passage from Africa to the Americas where time above deck was given in exchange for entertainment.
One of the works ‘Matrix Moves’, is a group of sculpted figures in various stages of the limbo dance, capturing the physical contortions that enslaved Africans had to perform for their owners. The bending bodies stand alongside limbo poles that are impossibly low—a metaphor for the continued manoeuvring that people of colour must endure.
Dipping Below a Waxing Moon, The Dance Claims Us For Release provides glimpses of redemption, empathy and compassion, despite addressing unpalatable truths about Britain, Bath, and the Holburne Museum.
The Holburne offers free entry to all Exhibitions to University of Bath Students & Staff
University of Bath: Library News 