We’re working with publishers to make additional reading list resources available electronically this semester.

To support students studying online during the COVID-19 outbreak, publishers have made some textbooks from University of Manchester reading lists temporarily available electronically until 30 June 2020.

You can access the available e-resources via Reading Lists Online.

If an item on your reading list isn’t available electronically, ask your course leader to email the Library’s Reading Lists team and we’ll do our best to help.

Between 6 December 2019 and 12 January 2020, no Library items will be subject to being recalled by other Library users.

If you urgently require a book during this period, and all copies of that item are out on loan, please speak to a member of staff.

You can speak to staff in person at any of our Library sites, via the yellow Library Chat tab on all pages on the Library website, or you can check our contact details page.

Use our Order a Book and Order an Article services, and we’ll get them for you.

Order a Book is free; Order an Article incurs a £2 administration charge. Both services are available to staff and students.

Find out more on the Library website

Interactive map

When a user clicks on a Library Search result, if that book is housed in Main Library, the location information now includes an option to ‘Locate this book’. Following the link opens an interactive map of Main Library, with the book’s shelf location highlighted in red.

• Search resources - Library website

The map appears as a floor plan and includes the key features of each floor, helping users to easily orientate themselves when looking for their book.

Helping customers in Main Library

The new Library Search feature has been developed in response to our customer feedback. In the most recent Library student survey, students suggested that having accessible floor plans of the Main Library would be helpful when locating books.

Currently, the ‘Locate a book’ feature is limited to books (not including journals) in the Main Library. However, there is the potential to expand the service and the Library’s customer service team will be monitoring feedback to assess the demand for this.

• Help and support - Library website

Screenshot

• Academic Book Week - official website

Each year there is a different theme to initiate wider debate and awareness of the academic book and to highlight the value of such research within the intellectual ecosystem of the UK.

Banned books

This year the theme is is influential books that have been banned; significant academic books or texts widely studied at higher education that have at one time been banned in the UK or worldwide.

The University of Manchester Library is planning to support Academic Book Week by highlighting influential texts, which have been censored over the centuries, paying particular attention to significant books that we hold in our collections.

To give you a sneaky preview: our highlights include a postmodernist text, a lesbian romance novel, an allegorical novella and arguably the most censored book in history!

Get involved

Piqued your interest? Make sure you follow our Twitter feed for more information:

• @UoMLibrary - The University of Manchester Library Twitter

If you would like to nominate your favourite significant academic books or texts that have at one time been banned in the UK or worldwide you can vote on the final list of titles here:

• Banned Books nominations - Academic Book Week 2019

Results of the public vote will be published in March.

To establish a service that delivers an excellent experience tailored to users’ needs, the Library led extensive research and pilot schemes to understand students’ attitudes to their reading. Students responded that they are more likely to complete their assigned reading when provided as an eTextbook, and prefer the format thanks to increased availability, convenience and low cost.

Students can download their core text to multiple devices via the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) for free, meaning they can access crucial course material anywhere at no cost. The Library’s eTextbooks have been accessed from 96 countries since September 2018.

To encourage students to engage deeply with their reading, eTextbooks provided by the Library include integrated learning tools such as note sharing, highlighting and annotations. Tutors can monitor usage and engagement via an analytics dashboard.

Find out more about the eTextbook Programme on the Library website.

Precinct Library will close for the final time at 8pm on Friday, 7 December, and the Eddie Davies Library will open at 9am on Wednesday, 2 January 2019.

Library customers are asked to borrow books in advance of the closure as there will be no access to print books, journals or our specialist database PCs during our move; however all our online resources will still be available.

In addition to the Precinct Library closure, The Finance Zone at Dover Street will close at 4pm on Friday, 14 December, reopening at 9am on Wednesday, 2 January 2019 in the new Eddie Davies Library.

During the move, The Finance Zone’s specialist facilities, including the Database Suite and Bloomberg Suite, will be unavailable, so customers are advised to access anything they need before we close.

The Big Book Move is the name for work which will see more than 21 kilometres of books re-shelved to new locations around Main Library to make books – including High Demand – part of a single, user friendly sequence so they will be easier to locate and borrow in the future.

Project schedule

Work begins on Monday, 11 June and continues across the quieter months of summer. Much of the move will be complete by the time we welcome new and returning students and academics to campus in September 2018.

The work is due to finish by November 2018 with the support of Library colleagues and Harrow Green – specialists in business and library relocations who are assisting us on site with reorganising the book stock on the shelves.

Study space

Students and other users may find it more comfortable and quieter to study in parts of the Library where work is not taking place that week.

Advice on the best areas for study and help locating books will be given by Library Staff at the main Customer Services Desk on Blue Ground Floor.

Signage will be located at areas where work is taking place and weekly updates on affected areas will be published on the Library website to minimise disruption.

Since the service launched on Monday, 19 February, more than 200 requests for books have been made by students, with the first requests starting to come in just after midnight.

The Library is providing further support to students with the ‘Order a Book’ service. If the Library doesn’t currently hold a copy of the book you need for your studies, simply fill in an order form and we will get it for you.

Find out more about the service and how to order a book at www.manchester.ac.uk/library/order-a-book

The gift has been welcomed by Rebecca Tipton, Lecturer in Interpreting and Translation Studies at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, who noted:

Look out for a small exhibition of book covers in the cabinet up on Green 3 in the Main Library, and listen out for a live performance of Burgess' music in the Library later in the year. You can find all our translated Anthony Burgess works in Library Search.

A full list of the languages included in the collection:

• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• Estonian
• Finnish
• French
• Georgian
• German
• Greek
• Hungarian
• Italian
• Japanese
• Korean
• Latvian
• Norwegian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish