It’s August and induction season is here!

Posted on August 12, 2025 by lawlibrarian

White lettering on a green background which reads: Come in, we're open.

Did you know that Academic Support Librarians (ASLs) work year round, even while most students are on their summer break? Here at UoE we have courses starting at different times throughout the year so some members of our team have already been hard at work helping students get settled in and familiar with Library Services right at the beginning of their university journey in Edinburgh.

For example, we have a lot of students who arrive for pre-sessional courses such as the ‘Essentials of English for Academic Purposes’ who began in July in order to complete some language courses before their PG study begins. We like to meet these students and make sure they’re familiar with which resources will be relevant for them, and how to ask for help in the very early part of their course so the information stays with them no matter what they go on to study.

A leaflet display on a table, with other stands around the room and small groups of students stood in between them.

ASLs had a stall at the Community Fairs organised by The Centre for Open Learning (COL) in July

We’ve been providing library introductions for new and returning students in the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, and we’ll soon be welcoming the latest cohort of Professional Graduate Diploma in Education (PGDE) students who will be arriving on the Holyrood campus on Monday 18^th August. This group of students traditionally start before other cohorts and spend limited time on-campus as they go out on school placements at the start of the academic year.

To facilitate early arrival on-campus, Ishbel (ASL for Moray House School of Education and Sport) has liaised with Programme Directors for PGDE Primary & Secondary to find out how many new students are expected to arrive for the 2025-26 session (PGDE Primary: 100 approx. & PGDE Secondary: 145-160 approx.) She has liaised with the Moray House Library EdHelp Team and with Pam Wells at the Main Library to arrange for student ID cards to be sent to Moray House Library in advance, which allows PGDE students to collect cards before ‘official’ card collection events take place during Welcome Week. This year, we’ve also had assistance from Jade Fenton (Graduate Library Trainee) and Tim Gray to arrange for Library tote bags to be delivered to Moray House Library in time for PGDE student arrivals.

We’ll also welcome Access students in August. Access courses are designed for adults who are returning to learning after a break and will go on to Undergraduate work in the future – they begin almost a full month before welcome week and continue on for two semesters.

We often talk about how there’s no one-size-fits-all scenario for our students and that’s because there’s so many different courses, circumstances and timetables to account for in our planning. This is just one example of how we’re trying to make sure everyone has a valuable and meaningful library experience no matter when they join us!

SCURL Conference 2025: increasing inclusion

Posted on July 25, 2025 by lawlibrarian

To add to our recent schedule of conference reports, last month several members of our

The ‘Sir Duncan Rice Library’, University of Aberdeen by Stanley Howe, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

team attend the Scottish Confederation of University & Research Libraries (SCURL) Conference on the 19th of June, which took place in the striking Duncan Rice Library at the University of Aberdeen.

We were delighted to see that the conference had such an interesting programme focused on the great work member teams are doing across the country to promote inclusivity and diversity of access. Sessions included topics such as ‘Radical Hospitality: how can academic libraries support seekers of refuge?’ and ‘Higher Education librarians and social class background’. There were poster presentations from various member libraries taking action in their own settings, and keynotes from Dr Rachel Shanks, Interdisciplinary Director for Social Inclusion and Cultural Diversity at the University of Aberdeen as well as Beth Hellen-Montague, Head of Library & Information Services, The Frances Crick Institute and author of Practical Tips for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion in Libraries (which is available as an ebook via DiscoverEd).

While all the talks were valuable, Beth spoke very knowledgeably on the practical work of becoming an EDI focused librarian, and while much of what she had to say regarding taking action (that all actions help, we don’t need one person doing inclusion perfectly but rather to take advantage of the positions, groups and access we already have), she also introduced new-to-us concepts such as the Academic Wheel of Privilege which we plan to consider in our future work. This can help us in making assessments regarding building our collections, but also how we approach the cultures around our educational systems and student backgrounds. It also links directly to the work Darren Flynn discussed in his session on social class in academic librarianship.

For more information about the Academic Wheel of Privilege and how it can be used for research, see the FORRT website.

We love to see a strong EDI strand in any conference we attend, and look forward to bringing our learnings from this event to discussions at our ASL EDI group and the wider L&UC EDI network too.

SarahLouise McDonald & Rania Karoula
Academic Support Librarians

Resource List focus groups: We want to know what you think!

Posted on March 15, 2024 by lawlibrarian

We’re in the midst of gathering feedback about Resource List use in each of our colleges and would like to invite our students to get involved in two short focus groups that will help us shape our approach to lists in the future.

We have planned groups for the following schools:

Geosciences: Thursday 28 March 10am to 12pm

Law: Wednesday 17th April 2pm to 4pm

Both groups will take place in Central Edinburgh so if you’re a student from one of these schools and available at these times, please email our project manager Karen to register your interest.

Tea, coffee and cake will be provided and participants will receive a £10 gift card for Blackwells, which can be used to purchase any of their worldly goods (including books, games, stationery and much more!).

There are eight spaces available in each group. All feedback will be used to inform the development of lists within the school and responses will be anonymised.

If you have any questions about the process please contact Karen Stirling by email.

(NOTE: Law group date changed from 26th March to 17th April to gather more participants.)

Academic writing help: Royal Literary Fund Fellow

Posted on January 31, 2024 by lawlibrarian

Photo by @Aspen on nappy.co

Are you a student who is struggling with academic writing? Are you a staff member who knows of a student who isn’t quite getting the hang of writing at University level?

Perhaps you need to book an appointment with our Royal Literary Fund Fellow. Mary Paulson-Ellis is a well-respected expert in the field of writing, and has been a writing mentor, workshop leader, tutor and writer-in-residence for many organisations including the National Centre for Writing, the National Galleries of Scotland and the Edinburgh International Festival. She is also a committee member for the Society of Authors in Scotland, and student feedback from her first semester working at Edinburgh has been enthusiastically positive. She specialises in helping students in any discipline hone their writing skills and she does this by arranging one-to-one appointments with students in the Main Library.

The service is free, confidential and individual to each student’s needs. To find out more about the service you can visit our RLFF page, or to book an appointment please email Mary directly.

JIL Webinar: Writing about Information Literacy (report)

Posted on December 1, 2023 by lawlibrarian

As well as bringing you news and updates from the library, we like to use this blog to report on some of the Continued Professional Development activities we get up to as Academic Librarians. This week several members of our team attended a webinar presented by the Journal of Information Literacy on the topic of Writing about Information Literacy, and we found it to be both useful and inspiring so we thought we’d share some of our key findings.

The session opened with a brief introduction to JIL, who they are and what they do. JIL is the professional journal of the CILIP Information Literacy Group, and if you’ve not encountered them before then they are a well respected publication in UK information literacy:

Founded in 2007, the Journal of Information Literacy (JIL) is an international peer-reviewed journal and is aimed at librarians, information professionals and academics who teach and/or research aspects of information literacy. The journal includes articles from established and new authors that investigate many different areas of information literacy, including school, academic and national libraries, health care settings, and the public sector such as the workplace and government.

A few of our team had previously attended sessions run by Editor-In-Chief Dr Alison Hicks and Managing Editor Dr Meg Westbury at the LILAC conference, so we knew we were in for an hour of useful tips, tricks and key information for submitting to this (but also any) journal.

The presenters addressed different types of submission they might accept in JIL, including Research Articles, Project Reports and Book or Conference Reviews, and briefly described the requirements for each. They looked at the submission process (and why it might feel that it takes so long!) and also suggested how to respond to feedback in a useful and concise way. There were lots of tips about how to stay focused, and a book recommendation for those of us who are worried about the best writing environment:

Sword, H. (2017) Air & light & time & space : how successful academics write / Helen Sword. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
You can find this book at the Main Library, details via DiscoverEd.

Meg also suggested writing Tiny Texts as a way to get started, which you can read more about on the slides which they presented as part of the ‘Getting Your Writing Groove Back’ session from the 2022 LILAC conference.

Overall those of us in the virtual room felt it was a really valuable hour which made academic writing seem accessible and useful to us as library practitioners. Unlike our colleagues in the States, publishing academic work is not a requirement for our jobs here. However we do engage in professional development activities to ensure we’re well informed about new developments particularly across the academic library sector, and reading and contributing to journals is just one of the ways we can do that. While it can seem difficult to make time to write and publish alongside our day jobs, the team at JIL seem to be more than willing to help develop fledgling writers and would be a great port of call for anyone looking to get started in writing about the Information Literacy initiatives in their institution. This session was presented in collaboration with the Information Literacy Group’s New Professionals team, though we would probably say it was useful for anyone considering writing up their work for publication – we certainly found it useful as not-so-new professionals!

If you’re interested in reading and writing more journal articles about library work, why not consider joining the Library Journal Club? We welcome members from any area of Library Services who have an interest in reading and critically discussing publications about libraries. We meet regularly both in person and on Teams, and have a trip to the Library of Mistakes planned for December! You can find us on Teams here.

Five reasons you should use LibSmart to prep for your assignments

Posted on November 14, 2023 by lawlibrarian

Here we are midway through the first semester, and you may start to feel like you should be looking ahead to your end of semester assessments. Often students feel a bit overwhelmed before their first hand in, but here at the library we’re keen to help you feel confident from the start. Read on to find out why LibSmart is one of the best ways to prepare for your research and writing….

1. LibSmart shows you the basics of finding information in easy-to-follow lessons

Split into five simple sections, LibSmart I takes you through everything you need to find good material to base your assignments on. You’ll learn about how to search the library catalogue, how to double check your course reading, and suggestions of where to go for follow up resources.

2. You can dip in and out of it any time that suits you

One of the great things about LibSmart is all new students are already enrolled! You just need to log in to learn and click on the ‘Essentials’ tab on the left to find it. It’s there whenever you need it all year long, so if you’re feeling like you need to be productive at 11pm one evening then log on and complete a module. We’re sure you’ll either learn something new or you’ll feel more confident that you’re on the right track.

3. The whole of LibSmart I can take less than one afternoon to work through

We designed LibSmart I so that it’s not a huge effort for you to complete. We know your time is precious and that you may have classes to get to, work shifts to make or social activities that are a huge and important part of your student experience. We wanted to make the information in LibSmart as accessible as possible, and while you can take it at whatever pace you like, we know that some students like to rattle through it in just one day. Whichever route you chose, we appreciate the time you spend there.

4. You’ll learn valuable skills on how to get started with referencing

Referencing is one of the top enquiries we Academic Support Librarians receive – people are confused by it or don’t understand what, where and how to do it properly. LibSmart I has a really useful introductory module that can help you get to grips with the foundations of referencing, and offers top advice on how to find the right style and systems for you. If you’re feeling stuck with where to start then this is the place to go.

5. It’s so much more than just library stuff!

We know it’s a lot to ask students to spend a few hours on looking specifically at library catalogues and databases especially when this isn’t prescribed reading on any particular course. However, students who’ve spent time on LibSmart believe it’s really made a difference to their experience as a student.

When I signed up, I assumed the course was just an introduction to the library but it has really been a guide to how academic research works. I wonder if more people would have signed up for this if they had realised it was not just a tour of the library to see where the books were kept. Along with the one hour “Study Skills” course I did, which was also surprisingly useful in its content, I feel I got as much learning from these free courses as the main one I paid for.

If you’re interested in giving LibSmart a go, you can find out more on our website.

Alternatively if you’re keen to get started straight away, just visit Learn and click on the Essentials tab on the left hand navigation. It’s all there ready for whenever you need it!

New College Library Reopens at Mound Place

Posted on October 17, 2023 by lawlibrarian

Photo of New College Library Hall, New College, Mound Place

We’re delighted to be able to tell you that New College Library re-opened on Monday 11 September at Mound Place, with access to Library Hall collections (including Reserve collections), study spaces and a range of Library and EdHelp services.

New College Library’s collections were relocated in 2020, as part of a New College site wide Fire Asset Protection project. Approximately 4 km of General Collections were moved to 40 George Square and about 3 km of Heritage Collections were moved to multiple locations, including deep storage. In August this year, library moves began to return the General Collections to their original home in Mound Place. The first students to enter the reopened library on September 11 simply said:

It’s beautiful …

While unanticipated buildings issues have delayed some collections moves, we expect that the collections in Stacks I and II will be fully available by early October. As throughout the move period, we will provide additional interlibrary loans to support access to any collection items which are inaccessible because of this delay. The move of New College Library’s Heritage Collections, originally scheduled for July 2023, has been paused while we ensure we have appropriate environmental conditions in all relevant storage spaces. We are looking forward to the return of Heritage Collections to New College later this academic year.

Further library information and opening hours at : http://www.ed.ac.uk/is/new-college- library.

This article has been cross posted from the October Library Updates newsletter. For more information on what’s new in the library this month you can read all articles here.

LibSmart: All students now automatically enrolled!

Posted on September 20, 2023 by lawlibrarian

We’re very excited to let you know that from this year onwards all students at Undergraduate and Postgraduate level will automatically be enrolled in our LibSmart online information literacy course! If you’ve not encountered LibSmart before, it’s a great way to get to grips with finding and using information available to you via the Library. It’s asychronous which means you can dip in and out whenever suits you across the year, and we tend to find people use it either at the start of term when they need to start looking reading material up, or right before they start research for their assignments.

LibSmart I is our foundation level course, helping students get a good baseline in using our library catalogue, searching for reading materials for courses, and understanding the best places to go for help. We also talk about referencing and plagiarism, something students will need to understand at every level of university life.

LibSmart II is a bit more specialised – it takes a subject-specific look at different topics that people find tricky to work with, such as systematic reviews, data mindfulness and digital news sources. We walk you through different types of resource and processes for working with this information, and hopefully leave you feeling confident of where to start with your assignment or research project. We recommend you complete LibSmart I first, but if you’re feeling confident and ready to dive in to LibSmart II then you’re welcome to start wherever you like!

And if the achievement of completing a module alone doesn’t bring you joy, we also award you some lovely digital badges for each module you complete. You can save them and use them as evidence of the self-directed learning you’ve completed via LibSmart – something that could look very attractive to future employers!

Picture of LibSmart digital badges in a wooden picture frame leaning against a wall

Earn digital badges for every module you complete in LibSmart I and II.

To access LibSmart, simply follow these steps:

Visit www.learn.ed.ac.uk
Log in using your UUN (normal university username and password)
On the left hand navigation, select ‘Organisations’
Locate LibSmart I: Your Library Research Starts Here (2023/24) from the list, or LibSmart II: Advance your Library Research (2023/24).
Click into the course and start working your way through!

If you would like some further information on LibSmart you can find out more on our LibSmart webpage which includes information about the modules available and a look at what previous students have found most useful about the course. Of course if you have any questions please leave us a comment or email us.

Library summer opening and changes to service

Posted on July 5, 2023 by lawlibrarian

Although this blog mainly focuses on the work of the ASL team (who are library focused but often work remotely) we realise that many readers may associate this blog with the physical library spaces, so we wanted to highlight a few things happening over the summer in our library buildings.

Summer opening hours: Main Library

The Main Library is now operating on Summer opening hours. This means the following hours of operation apply:

Day	Building	EdHelp Service Desk
Monday – Thursday	24 hour opening	9am – 7:50pm
Friday	24 hour opening	9am – 4:50pm
Saturday	24 hour opening	12 midday – 4:50pm
Sunday	24 hour opening	12 midday – 4:50pm

Please note that this week new gates will be fitted to the Main Library entrance and exit, Café exit gates and the High Use Books exit gates. The works will be carried out between Tuesday 4th July-Thursday 7th, 9:00-5:00pm. You can still access the Main Library, alternate entrances and exits will be clearly marked. You can find out more about this (as well as opening hours for the Centre for Research Collections, Main Library Cafe and links to other information) on the Main Library Opening Hours page.

Summer opening hours: Site libraries

The majority of our site libraries open for reduced hours during the summer. Information can be found on the individual sites listed on the Library Opening Hours page.

The vast majority of our libraries operate from 9am to 4.50pm, Monday to Friday during the summer and are closed at weekends. Exceptions this summer are the Art & Architecture Library and New College Library, which we have detailed below.

Art & Architecture Library

Due to building works in Minto House there is currently an alternative entrance to the Art & Architecture Library. Entering Minto House either via the main reception area or the Maltings entrance, follow the signs downstairs to the temporary library entrance door in the lower ground floor (basement) corridor.

UPDATE: Due to disruption as a result of essential building works within Minto House, it will be necessary to close the Art & Architecture Library between Monday 10th July and Sunday 3rd September. Please email us at library.account@ed.ac.uk for any enquiries or if you urgently require any print resources during this time and we will endeavour to make them available within 2 working days from the Law Library in Old College. Please consult the Art & Architecture Opening Hours page for more information.

New College Library

Due to essential maintenance works all New College Library’s current services except for Special Collections were transferred to the temporary library at 40 George Square in 2020. A schedule for the move of New College Library services and collections back to New College Library, Mound Place in 2023 has now been agreed. The main expected dates are :

9 August 2023 : New College Library, 40 George Square closes for General Collections moves.
11 September 2023 : New College Library, Mound Place opens for access to services and collections.

Until 9 August 2023, NCL General Collections and Library services will remain fully available for students in the library at 40 George Square. For more information please see the New College Library page.

We hope this is useful for anyone wishing to visit our lovely libraries over the summer. The ASL team will be available throughout July and August, so please contact us if you have any queries, either by email or by leaving a comment on this post.

Critical Approaches to Libraries (CALC) 2023

Posted on June 21, 2023 by lawlibrarian

I attended the CALC Conference on 24th and 25th May and can thoroughly recommend this annual event to other professionals interested in critical librarianship. The gathering was welcoming and introduced the day by stating “we will operate within a spirit of liberation at this conference”. If you have not heard of CALC before, their website states that “The Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference aims to provide a space to discuss all aspects of critical practice in libraries and librarianship including (but not limited to) decolonisation, critical pedagogy, equality, diversity and inclusion in library work and the representation of marginalised groups in the workforce, academia and literature.”

The 2 day conference was packed with a diverse range of topics and speakers, so I can only highlight a few here. At the end of the blog post I have included links to further reading.

Some of my key take-aways were:

When designing a support resource for ebook accessibility question your assumptions about students understanding of platforms, and co-design courses with students.
When investigating library ‘decolonisation’ initiatives there is no such thing as “neutral”. Be clear about your positionality and privileges. Find actionable recommendations to solve a problem (move beyond critiquing, to action). Look at Algorithms of Oppression book (on DiscoverEd).

In the Day 1 conference Keynote: Decolonising bibliographies, referencing and citational practices Dr Gurnam Singh shared so many important reflections for where we find ourselves right now, such as:

“Enlightenment belongs to humanity not to Europe!”
“Colonialism is an economic endeavour and is still happening”.
“Critiquing the canon means exposing the othering and silencing of people”.

Dr Singh discussed the various types of colonisation to be aware of such as settler colonisation, extractive colonisation, and plantation colonisation.

(Colonialism is generally classified by one of five overlapping types according to the practice’s particular goals and consequences on the subjugated territory and its indigenous peoples. These are: settler colonialism; exploitation colonialism; plantation colonialism; surrogate colonialism; and internal colonialism.)

Dr Singh then went on to compare the fixed hierarchies of arborescent thought versus rhizomatic thought’s interconnected multiplicity and networks of thought, which rejects fixed categories and sees connections and dialogues.

Some of his comments might be challenging to some people, such as “Citation rankings are monetised and racist, and so therefore is the REF [Research Excellence Framework]”. It is true that currently citation rankings perpetuate certain dominant authors and global voices, which position Western discourse as the most “valid” or important. Dr Singh said “When an article has 10 authors you just know its gaming the citation rankings – its fraud. The publishing industry is colonial – it’s based on colonial attitudes.”

“Decoloniality is about building a new humanity not going back to a “purer” time. This isn’t a specialist subject, its about being human. Maybe AI could release us to be humans and not robots?”

Other topics covered by other speakers included multilingualism in public libraries; using reflective practices to extend the impact of teaching in libraries; developing collaborative cataloguing codes of ethics; setting up Library Decol Working Groups in academic libraries; exploring working class roots of library staff and their experiences in the mostly middle class populations of HE library staff; being a neurodivergent librarian in HE; using critical race theory in medical curriculum decolonisation work; and using the Homosaurus for cataloguing in a public library consortium.

We were encouraged to develop the attitude that everybody brings something to the workplace – a richness of their own, rather than making assumptions about the limitations of people based on their assumed backgrounds, identities, or experiences of “othering”.

I can thoroughly recommend attending this very affordable and welcoming conference!

Jane Furness
ECA Academic Support Librarian

Academic Support Librarians

Helping you get the best from the Library, its collections, resources and services

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