• Essential skills for online learning - a flexible training course to help you develop skills to get the most out of being an online learner. 
• Subject guides - useful information and tailored resource recommendations for your subject.
• My Learning Essentials - learning-specific resources including writing dissertations and essays, proofreading, and avoiding plagiarism.
• My Research Essentials - research-specific resources including citation analysis, journal editing and managing research data.
• Advanced searching and systematic reviews online resources
• Business data
• Copyright
• Maths and statistics
• Referencing

Follow us on social media to hear about new training and resources when they’re released:

• Twitter
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Got a question?

If you have a learning support question, you can browse our FAQs or ask one of our Library experts.

Contact us by opening a chat in Library Chat or emailing uml.teachingandlearning@manchester.ac.uk

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.

A new digital collection, containing key works of Middle English literature, has been added to our Manchester Digital Collections platform, making them available to anyone online.

As well as being landmark literary texts, the items contain some wonderful illustrations, such as the delicate use of gold leaf on the “Wheel of Fortune” illumination shown here.

These incredible manuscripts will be of paramount importance to a wide variety of subject areas, including literature, history, theology, linguistics and art history.

The collection includes such works as the Canterbury Tales and John Lydgate‘s two major poems; the incredibly beautiful, richly illuminated Troy Book and a deluxe copy of Fall of Princes.

There are also several copies of the Brut chronicle the medieval history of England, ranging in date from the mid-14th century to the second half of the 15th.

Further notable works include numerous copies of the New Testament, translated into English by John Wycliffe the fourteenth-century radical and church reformer. Alongside these are other devotional texts meditating on the life of Christ and The Pricke of Conscience, a work traditionally attributed to the mystic Richard Rolle de Hampole.

Other interesting and unusual highlights include a multi-language legal commonplace book and medical texts such as On Urines, plus a rare late 14th-century copy of the Forme of Cury (‘proper method of cookery’), a recipe book compiled by the master cook of Richard II.

These items were initially digitised as part of a Jisc funded project called In the Bigynnyng.

You can view these items, along with other incredible collections, now via Manchester Digital Collections.

Petrarch is most well known as a poet but he was also a prolific scholar, and is often cited as the “father of humanism”. He was an extremely influential figure at the beginning of the Renaissance, and his works were instrumental in the formation of the modern Italian language.

The project focussed on material produced in Italy between 1350 and 1650 that examined or provided a commentary on Petrarch’s works, cataloguing more than 400 individual manuscripts and 300 early printed books. They illustrate the incredible impact of Petrarch’s poetry during his life and for hundreds of years afterwards.

Dr Guyda Armstrong and Julianne Simpson led on the project’s online digital library. This library encompasses approximately 84 works housed in The John Rylands Library and 14 further editions from the Special Collections of the Hesburgh Library at the University of Notre Dame, USA.

The digital library, which is available to anyone via Manchester Digital Collections, presents not only images of digitised books and other items but interpretation providing the viewer with interesting insights.

It is hoped that the project will open up new directions for research around one of Italy’s best-known medieval poets.

The digitised works can be viewed online now, via Manchester Digital Collections.

Whilst the space has always housed maps, it is the first time it is being treated as a Special Collections Reading Room, which means staff will be available during the week to help with map enquiries. It also means that the area is reserved for customers consulting maps and special material. To protect the collections, food and drink are not allowed in this area (even bottled water).

The trial service will run from today, 30 September for three months, and will include provision for teaching workshops and other enhanced study for those engaging with our map collections.

Staff will be on hand to help on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30 to 4.30pm. Appointments to view maps must be made in advance.

If you have any questions, feedback on the service, or wish to make an appointment, email: uml.maps@manchester.ac.uk

Here are just a few of the Library’s highlights.

We began collaborating with the University of Cambridge Library on a digital image viewer that allows enhanced viewing and manipulation of items held in our Special Collections. This is a significant strategic partnership for both Universities and will be of great benefit to researchers.

The Library launched Open Access +, a premium service to support researchers find new audiences. The service helps researchers by navigating them through Twitter to find people with an interest in their field and creating media interest with press releases. The service has received fantastic feedback and is going from strength to strength.

Further improvements were made to our book loaning service. Students told us that they sometimes find it difficult to find books, in response we launched our ‘find a book’ feature. When using Library Search, if the book is housed in Main Library the location information now features a ‘locate book’ function that displays the exact location of the book being searched for.

We also extended our loan periods so students can keep hold of books for a year, taking the pressure off worrying about returning books.

We are always looking for sustainable ways to reduce waste. This year we launched paperless reservations, trialling ‘request from shelf’. Instead of books being marked with paper, students were sent an email.

Have a brilliant summer and here is to an exciting new academic year.

Library Staff moved 43,797 items from the old Precinct Library to the Eddie Davies Library over the Christmas/New Year period. The latest editions of key Business and Management journals are available on the shelves, with back issues available on request.

The Finance Zone has expanded, offering 24 brand new, high spec, specialist database PCs, each with two to four screens, and a bigger breakout space.

You can view a walkthrough of the building via the AMBS Twitter account:

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.

If you’ve been following the @MLEManchester twitter account, you will have seen our student team has been sharing their top ten tips for surviving the exams.

As well as the top tips they've been sharing on twitter, we’ve been able to get hold of some extra tips, just in case you need a bit more help.

If you’ve still got exams left to go, and you’re struggling with revision – the team had the following tips for you:

• Teach someone else. It’s a good way to spot gaps in your knowledge and the person you’re teaching may ask questions that you might not have previously considered.
• Use coloured pens in your notes. Colour coordination may help you recall a mental picture of your notes.
• Test yourself. Think of some exam questions and answer them without your notes. Don’t be afraid to include questions from the areas you find most challenging.
• Make posters. Use words and facts – rather than writing out whole sentences. Include images that make the poster more memorable.

They also had some great ideas for managing exam stress, which can be a real problem as the exam period comes to an end:

• “Fight or flight” hormones in our body are released when we’re stressed. Physical activity can help combat this by releasing endorphins and returning your body to a relaxed state.
• You’re more prone to stress when you’re tired. Try to distract your brain from worries a few hours before bed by doing some calming activities such as reading a book or having a hot bath.
• Learn to say “no” and prioritise the things that are most important to you. Sticking to the most essential tasks will prevent you from feeling overwhelmed.
• Remember to eat right – have proper breakfasts and eat fruits and veg. Fuel your brain as well as your body – no once can think straight on only coffee and chocolate!

As well as these examples of ways you can help yourself, remember that the Library has lots of activities to help you with your wellbeing, from our “Calm your brain and have a croissant” sessions to guided meditation. Further information on all our support options can be found on our Exam Extra webpages.

Finally we’d like to end by sharing this important tip about post-exam blues:

Steer clear of any exam ‘post-mortem’. There’s no point thinking about what your friend wrote for Question 3(b). It’s too late to go back and change your answers, so it will just make you worry even more.

Good luck, and we wish you all the best in your exams.

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.

• Access the Desktop version of BrowZine

Journals from different publishers and suppliers are all presented with a uniform look and feel within the interface and, using BrowZine’s predictive search, you can search on subject, title or ISSN. You can also view all available journals in a specific subject area or even a specific discipline within that subject area. Between July 2017 and June 2018 students and staff at The University of Manchester downloaded 3,072 full-text articles from 923 unique e-journals using BrowZine.

The interface contains a customisable virtual newsstand display called 'My Bookshelf' which can be used to easily browse content and then personalise it by selecting your favourite journals.

By setting up a free account you can take advantage of additional features, such as saving your favourite journals to your personal bookshelf and saving articles for reading later.

Journals can easily be added to the My Bookshelf area directly from their table of contents page, and shelves can be customised so you can easily place particular journals in terms of subject matter, speciality, or just alphabetically. My Bookshelf consists of four coloured rooms, or "bookcases," that hold sixteen titles each (four on each "shelf"), for a total of sixty-four individual journals. You can change titles of bookcases and shelves to aid in organisation.

Once a title is added to your My Bookshelf area, BrowZine will notify you when new articles are published in a journal by pushing a badge alert notification to your device to indicate the number of unread articles in that specific journals. You can also save articles for offline reading, share articles through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or email and export citations to Zotero, Mendeley, BibTex, or EndNote.

Access

BrowZine is available for:

• iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches with iOS v8.x+
• Android tablets and smartphones with OS v4.1+
• Kindle Fire HD tablets

Start using the desktop version or download the free app from the Apple and Amazon App Stores and from Google Play. After downloading the app, find The University of Manchester in the list and enter your University of Manchester username and password when prompted.

The extension will pop-up and notify you when you are on a publisher website that contains scholarly content available to access through the Library, including e-journal articles, e-books and databases.

A single click will open that site via the Library ensuring you have got access to all the content the Library provides access to.

Download Library Access

For more details and set up instructions see the 'Library Access' page:

• Library Access