Category Archives: General information

Resource Lists: What do you think? We want to know!

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Vectored image of small people standing on and around a ginormous stack of books with a laptop balanced on top. The laptop screen shows the Resource List logo. Many of the small figures are reading books or on devices.

We’re in the midst of gathering feedback about Resource List use within the School of Law and would like to invite our students to get involved in a short focus group that will help us shape our approach to lists in the future.

If you’re available on Wednesday 17 April 2pm to 4pm and will be in Central Edinburgh then 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. The focus group will take the form of informal discussion with some structured questions about whether or not you use the List system, what you like about it, and will give you lots of time to provide your thoughts and discuss with others in the room. 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.

Resource Lists logo: a stylised graphic of a white book open to the centre pages shows on a teal background. Text underneath the book image reads 'Resource Lists'

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

Dissertation prep: resources for writing dissertations

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Did you know the library has a list of resources that can help you get started with big research projects such as dissertations? You may feel a bit overwhelmed about how to begin, but the library team have helpfully compiled a Resource List of books, guidance and articles that we think will ensure you feel more confident:

Law Dissertation (UG) 

Law Dissertation (PG)

Resource Lists are clickable pages of bookmarks that link directly to items in our library catalogue, many of which you can access online. Most courses will have prescribed Resource Lists that indicate the reading for your modules, and students tell us they find them helpful and easy to use. PG Students will also find this list linked in the Learn pages for PG dissertation students.

If this is your first time conducting a large research project, you may find the session we run each semester for PhD students in Law to be of interest. You can watch a recording of this session on our Media Hopper channel here:

Screengrab of first slide of Sources, Materials and Bibliographies recording.

Finally if you’re struggling to get to grips with literature searching then you can arrange a one-to-one appointment with us, your Law Librarian team. Visit the MyEd Events Booking system and look for ‘literature search clinic’ and select the option relating to Law. We offer appointments most weeks, and if you can’t see a bookable slot that suits you please email us on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk.

Academic writing help: Royal Literary Fund Fellow

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A student sits at her laptop, typing.

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. 

Library Tours for Staff 2024

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Are you a new or existing staff member who would like to find out more about the University’s libraries?

Join an Academic Support Librarian on a 20 to 30-minute in-person tour of one of our ten Library sites. Find out about key library services including EdHelp, borrowing, printing, and study spaces. Discover the general print collections at the Library and explore the subjects covered. These tours are suitable for staff in all roles across the university and staff can visit as many of our libraries as they wish.

The currently scheduled dates are listed below. To book a tour, visit Event Booking.

Schedule of library tours:

Main Library

22 January @ 09:30, 6 February @ 10:30, 6 March @ 14:00, 2 April @ 10:30, 8 May @ 14:00, 12 June @ 14:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)

Art and Architecture Library

5 March @ 09:15

 

Edinburgh College of Art Library

6 February @ 09:15, 9 April @ 09:15, 7 May @ 09:15, 11 June @ 09:15

 

Law Library

12 February @ 10:00, 21 March @ 11:00 (additional tours to be confirmed, or email law.librarian@ed.ac.uk for more info).

 

Moray House Library

25 Jan @ 11:00, 22 Feb @ 11:00, 21 Mar @ 11:00, 25 Apr @ 11:00, 23 May @ 11:00, 20 June @ 11:00

 

Noreen and Kenneth Murray Library

14 Feb @ 15:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)

 

New College Library

30 Jan @ 16:00, 27 Feb @ 16:00, 26 Mar @ 16:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)

 

Royal Infirmary Library

26 Jan @ 10:00, 7 Feb @ 10:00, 26 March @ 09:30 (additional tours to be confirmed)

 

The Lady Smith of Kelvin Veterinary Library

24 Jan @ 14:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)

 

Western General Hospital Library

25 Jan @ 10:00, 19 Mar @ 12:30, 22 May @ 13:00

Did you know…? Study Space Traffic Lights

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We’ve recently heard from students and staff that they would love for some kind of indicator of how busy the Law Library is when it comes to finding a study space. But did you know we’ve already got this information on our website?

If you visit the Law Library Location & Contact page you will find a traffic light panel that will tell you exactly how busy the library is at any time, and this information refreshes every 5 minutes! This is based on anonymised data taken from the swipe entry gates to the library, so while it doesn’t give us a seat-by-seat count of which spaces are available it’s a pretty good indicator of busy periods.

Screenshot of the traffic light occupancy bar which is displayed on the Law Library Locations webpage.

You’ll see above the colour coded lights that the bold text tells us that at 12.15 today the library is NOT BUSY. If you use your cursor to hover over the bar on the website a pop up text box will appear, which currently says “Library is at 20% of occupancy. You will find a choice of spaces in the library.”

If the library is full when you’re trying to visit you can check out the Study Spaces website for suggestions of where else you can go on central campus. You should also be aware that during the lead up to exams we make the MacLaren Stuart and Quad Teaching Rooms open for study. When these are available there will be large signs posted at the entrance to the library directing students to the available rooms.

NOTE: The traffic light sign is usually also displayed on the plasma screens next to the Helpdesk when you visit the Law Library, near the entrance to the Reserve section. At present this is not working properly but we are in the midst of getting it fixed, and will update when it is available again.

Welcome to Week One!

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Hello, and if you’re a new student joining us for the 2023/24 academic year we look forward to meeting you in the Law Library soon!

We are Anna Richards and SarahLouise McDonald, and we are your Law Librarians. Anna works the first half of the week, SarahLouise the second, and you can reach us both by email on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk at any time.

Photos of Anna and SarahLouise (L-R). The background is formed of a white space with black and blue geometric shapes behind the photos.

You may have already met us at one of the several induction sessions we’ve been running over the past week or two. If you missed them you can find recordings on the Law Librarian Media Hopper Channel:

The slides for each session are added as ‘attachments’ to the videos above. Please note that captions are automatically generated and we’ll endeavour to get them corrected over the coming month.

One session which wasn’t recorded was the Diploma Welcome to the Library session which was delivered face-to-face. If you’re a Diploma student you should already have access to the slides via your Learn pages, but if not you can find them here: Law – Diploma induction 2023.

If you’re looking for information on using the physical library, we recommend you check out the Law Library webpages and take a look at our Virtual Orientation Guide (Microsoft Sway document – other formats are available by request). We hope that you’ll get in touch with either ourselves or our colleagues on the library helpdesk by contacting EdHelp if you have any queries. See you in the library!

New ebooks: Hart Law 2023 collection

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Welcome to the Law School to all our new students and welcome back to our returning students! You’ll be glad to know that the library has expanded it’s ebook collection ahead of the new academic year and we now have access to Hart’s 2023 Law collection.

Some highlights include:

If you have suggestions for books you’d like us to purchase for the library, students can use the Student Request A Book (RAB) service. Staff members can follow the procedure on the Library Support intranet page.

New resource: Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge

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In January the School of Law was fortunate to host the book launch event for Professor Folúkẹ́ Adébísí’s Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility. 

Cover image of the book Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge. The book title and author information is located in a blue box on the centre-left of the cover. Behind is an image of cracked earth meeting green branches and foliage which are growing from the right edge of the cover.

From the publisher:

The law is heavily implicated in creating, maintaining, and reproducing racialised hierarchies which bring about and preserve acute global disparities and injustices. This essential book provides an examination of the meanings of decolonisation and explores how this examination can inform teaching, researching, and practising of law.

It explores the ways in which the foundations of law are entangled in colonial thought and in its [re]production of ideas of commodification of bodies and space-time. Thus, it is an exploration of the ways in which we can use theories and praxes of decolonisation to produce legal knowledge for flourishing futures.

This text is now available via DiscoverEd: Decolonisation and Legal Knowledge: Reflections on Power and Possibility.

If you’re interested in requesting material like this that you think would be a valuable addition to the Law Library, you can complete the Request A Book (RAB) form. Alternatively if you’re interested in the library securing access to subscriptions or expensive items that you think would benefit teaching or research, contact us by email (law.librarian@ed.ac.uk) to discuss your idea!

Would you like to be the next LexisNexis Student Associate?

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Each year our major databases recruit for a new Student Associate to fill the role of training and peer support. LexisNexis have announced they are currently looking for a student at the University of Edinburgh to fill this position for the 2023/24 academic year. Please see the attached flyer for more information:

LexisNexis Student Associate Job Advert

The closing date for applications is 17th July, applications can be submitted in the form of CVs at the following link: https://bit.ly/3IyxXDO 

Good luck!

 

Bloomsbury Professional Ebooks: formerly on LexisLibrary

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We want to alert students to a change we’re dealing with regarding Bloomsbury Professional ebooks which were formerly offered on the LexisLibrary platform.. Unfortunately going forward these will no longer be available on this database, and we’re working on access to them via Bloomsbury’s own platform instead.

The courses affected are mainly Property, Evidence, Criminal, Employment, and Contract Law, and the book titles are as follows:

  • Walker & Walker: The Law of Evidence in Scotland
  • A fingertip guide to Scots Criminal law
  •  Commercial Leases
  • McDonald’s Conveyancing Manual
  • Conveyancing Practice in Scotland
  • Property Trusts and Succession
  • Mental Health, Incapacity and the Law in Scotland
  • Scottish Law of Leases
  • Scots Criminal Law
  • Employment Law in Scotland
  • Contract Law in Scotland
  • Missives
  • Scottish Planning Law
  • Scottish Older Client Law Service
  • Drafting Wills in Scotland
  • International Sucession Laws
  • Thomson’s Delictual Liability
  • Tolley’s Estate Planning
  • Tolley’s Inheritance Tax
  • Tolley’s Company Law Handbook
  • Style Writs in the Sheriff Court

While negotiations are ongoing with Bloomsbury (and until the end of May 2023) we’ll be able to access all of these titles using a trial they’ve given us to their own platform, providing students from 2022/23 access through the end of Semester Two exams. The procedure for finding these books is as follows:

  1. Visit the EResources Trials page
  2. Click on ‘Bloomsbury Professional Scots Law Titles’
  3. You will be prompted to log in with your usual username and password.
  4. You’ll arrive at a page that will give you the username and password to use on the Bloomsbury site
  5. Click the link to Bloomsbury (it helps to do this in a new tab or window so you can copy the log in details), then enter the username and password to log in.
  6. Use the navigation on the left hand side to access the title of the book you need.

This information has been added to the DiscoverEd records for these books, and I will also be circulating it via newsletters, blogs and other communication channels. Please do share this information with your classmates to assist them with their study or research if they require access to these books.

If you have any issues accessing these items please email us on law.librarian@ed.ac.uk.