As we round into the last straight and head towards the finish line for the academic year (exam season for most people), time for many people becomes a peculiarly precious commodity. If you need to find something (a book, a fact, an image, a few dozen choice scholarly articles … really anything) for your assignments, or you need a helping hand with your referencing (and who doesn’t!) stop by the Library Help Desk between 11 am – 1 pm, Monday-Friday (except Bank Holiday Mondays – there are a couple of those coming up in May!) or chat with a librarian 24/7 online through the Library website.

Nestled in our Quick Choice books collection in the new relaxation corner of the Library, you can find many fantastic reads; today I’d like to highlight one written by the mother of one of our students who published the novel Cry of the hornbill with one of India’s most reputable traditional publishers. Not only has Mrs Iqubal kindly donated a copy of her new book to the Library, but she agreed to tell us more about the writing process and becoming a published author.

Noisy drilling works will be taking place in Area 1A near the Map Library on the first floor between 8-10 am tomorrow morning (Tuesday 29 April) as part of essential ongoing maintenance work.

Computer rooms OA 1 and OA 2 will also both close for an hour each while the smoke alarms in these rooms are replaced. 

From 1 May 2025, our main ebook provider, Ebook Central, will change its default ebook format from PDF to the more modern and accessible EPUB format. EPUB is a flexible and screen reader accessible format that presents text, images, videos, links and other embedded interactive elements in a screen reader friendly format.

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While undergraduate and Masters degree dissertations may offer helpful insights and can serve as treasure troves of useful references to support your own research, doctoral theses are considered scholarly publications fit to be referenced in their own right. The Library has a large collection of doctoral theses from past students, most of which are available online, with some older theses still held in print. Theses from other universities are held in various other online databases.

It is often helpful to see what “good” looks like, and every year, students contact the Library to ask how they can get hold of exemplar copies of past dissertations for their course. For many courses, exemplar dissertations are available on Moodle but a selection of student dissertations are held in the Library’s online edissertations database.