Much like staff and students across the University, the Liaison Librarian team have had to find new ways of working from home over the last few months. Whilst we miss supporting students in campus classrooms and in our library offices, we have managed to supplement all our usual teaching and advice with an online equivalent, meaning we are still able to help you in much the same way as we would on campus.
If you’ve never met your Liaison Librarian before, it's good to know that there’s a librarian for every subject area, who can support you with using library resources, research and referencing queries. We’re pleased that students have been contacting us by email and if queries need more time, we’ve enjoyed seeing students in one-to-one online appointments where we can share screens and provide more detailed guidance. Below are some examples of the types of queries we’ve been able to help students with whilst working remotely.
We’re here to help you find the reading you need for your academic work. Over the last semester we’ve helped students use Discover to locate additional information. Discover is great for finding extra books and articles, particularly when you’re just starting out on a topic. We’ve pointed students in the right direction to access reading list texts. And we’re working hard to provide online versions of your key texts. Publishers won’t always let this happen or will only offer restricted licences, so we also liaise with module coordinators to try, where copyright restrictions allow, to digitise some sections of physical books from our own collection, so you can still read them online.
Discover is a good scoping tool for your research, and while it’s often a great place to start your initial reading, many of our specialist resources are not included in this search. For example, if you were looking for information about the 1918 influenza pandemic, a Discover search would retrieve academic sources about the pandemic – but not primary sources created at the time. Searching in one of our historical newspaper collections, such as British Library Newspapers, or the ProQuest Historical Newspapers would retrieve dozens of newspaper reports from the UK, Ireland and United States, with scans of the newspaper pages for you to browse through. For different subjects, the Liaison Librarians can give guidance about the different specialist platforms available, the scope of a database’s content, and give you some top tips about how to build a search to find what you are looking for.
The Liaison Librarians are a fantastic source of referencing support, and you may already have been taught referencing skills by one of us as part of your study programme. We actively maintain a referencing guide and can help you find the answer to questions such as “which referencing style should I use?”, as well as providing a link to the Cite Them Right guide for referencing and avoiding plagiarism. We have also written a step-by-step guide to using EndNote Desktop, to help you get started and take the pain out of using reference management software!
Each Liaison Librarian has prepared subject library guides which introduce you to the key resources in your specific subject area. This is a great jumping off point for your research. Each Librarian’s contact details are listed on their guides so you can easily email us with additional questions you might have. From there, your Liaison Librarian is available to support you by offering a one-to-one appointment online when you need a bit more in-depth help.
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