The library working environment: study break passes and texting service

Maintaining a pleasant working environment for everyone who uses the library is one of our main concerns. To ensure that it continues to be a great place to study, we have introduced, or rather reintroduced for those of you  who have used the library for a few years, two new schemes.

Study break scheme

We are still operating at reduced capacity and we’d like to make sure everyone has access to the study space they need. A study break pass allows you to take a break of up to 30 minutes during which time you can leave your belongings unattended. While we don’t take any responsibility for unattended personal stuff, with our study break scheme you can make sure that we don’t move your things to make space for other library users during the 30 minutes. After that time or if you choose not to use a study break card and you are away from the desk, other library users or staff are able to move your belongings to the side to make space. Find out more here or email library@sgul.ac.uk with any comments you might have.

Noise in the library

We have also introduced a texting service, so you are easily able to alert us to noise in the library or other issues affecting your study space. Text us, with your location, on 07562901543 and we will ensure you can study in peace and quiet. This service is available between 9am and 9pm Monday through to Sunday. Again, if you have any comments about this, please email library@sgul.ac.uk.

We hope that these schemes allow us to continue keeping the library a pleasant working environment for all library users.

Summer Opening Hours in the Library

The library is soon changing to Summer Opening Hours. During August the library will remain open as follows:

• Monday to Friday: 8am – 11pm
• Saturday and Sunday: 9am – 9pm

The library helpdesk will continue to be staffed from 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday. Usual 24 hour opening times will resume from September.

The Research Enquiries Desk (RED) and IT clinic also have changed hours* over the Summer. The RED is now open from 12-2pm, Monday to Friday. The IT clinic is open 1-2pm, Monday and Wednesday.

* These hours are subject to change

Book Stock Delivery on Friday 15th June

Life in the library never stands still and tomorrow, Friday 15th June, we are expecting a big book stock delivery to add to our collection. The couriers will be delivering the books at around 12pm via the silent and quiet study areas. This means that there may be some disruption over lunch for a couple of hours. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience.

Changes to library doors

Due to the large volume of noise-related complaints received by the Library over this academic year, we have made some alterations to two access routes within the space. Firstly, and most significantly, is the main library entrance. The glass sliding doors have now been locked, and a push panel swing door has been installed to the right of the original doors. We hope this will greatly reduce the noise transference from the area outside the Library to the study areas, and make for a more conducive study environment.

In addition to this, the manual door between the group study area and the large silent study area has been converted into a fire exit only door. Once again, we have carried out this work in order to reduce the noise transference between these two study spaces.

We value your feedback and comments so please do contact us via an email to library@sgul.ac.uk

New text service for reporting noise

We have introduced a new texting service to enable library users working in the Computer Rooms or Library to anonymously report noise and disturbances by way of a text message to a specified mobile phone number.

You can text: 07856 183309  with the following information: location and description of the problem.

This service will run from 9am to 9pm, seven days a week. Texts will be sent directly to a member of security or library staff who will patrol the area and approach users who are behaving inappropriately.

The rules and regulations for using the Library are available on our website.

 

St George’s Library in 2016

As 2016 draws to an end, we bring to you the highlights for St George’s Library.

Supporting RAG Week

This year, the Library supported St George’s Students’ Union’s Raising and Giving Week by donating fines for a day and raised £137.45. The supported charities were Equip Africa, MACS and St George’s Hospital Charity.

App Swap

We’ve been continuing with our App Swap events. where staff and students get to talk about the apps that they have used, or have been involved with. Response has been great from student and staff who have attended, include Learning Advocate Ele Clancey. We aim to run more next year.

Supporting 10 Days of Wellbeing

June was the month for peace and relaxation in the Library, not least because it saw the St George’s Staff Development team launch its first “10 Days of Wellbeing” programme. We supported the new initiative by putting out a book swap trolley in the library foyer, where students and staff were encouraged to pick up or drop off books to share with others. We also added a selection of Mood-Boosting Books to the library collection.  To date, the most popular title of the Library’s 2016 Mood-Boosting collection is The President’s Hat by Antoine Laurain.

Library Refresh

Regular library users might have noticed a few changes to the look of the library, especially the main Quiet Study Group area; this year we replaced all our chairs, brought in round tables, and then brought back rectangular tables due to student demand. We also added screens to create a more flexible study space and help reduce noise. We’re always looking for ways that we can make the space work better for all our users and are open to feedback – let us know if you have any thoughts by speaking to staff or filling in a feedback form at the Library helpdesk.

Extended Opening Hours

In response to student feedback and after running some successful trials, this July we were pleased to announce that during the 2016/17 academic year we would once again be offering extended opening hours.

We’re now open longer than ever before; offering 24 hour access to the Library from 8am on Monday mornings to 9pm Saturday evenings and 9am-9pm on Sundays.

Library Treasure Hunt

The start of the new academic year is always very busy for library staff and this September/October was no different as we welcomed all our new undergraduate and postgraduate students – we hope you are all now well settled in to life at St George’s! Alongside our busy programme of induction sessions, we ran a Treasure Hunt featuring a number of clues and activities to help new students find their way around the Library and its resources.

Fresher’s Fayre Winners

Thank you to everyone who took part in our Social Media competition by liking our Facebook page and following us on Twitter. Our lucky prize draw winners went away with Honest Burger vouchers, Blossom tote bags and a St George’s teddy among other prizes. We also gave away a £20 Amazon voucher in our Treasure Hunt prize draw. Best of all, everyone who took part in the Social Media Competition can now get useful Library updates straight to their Twitter and Facebook feeds!

New Book Display

In September we introduced a book display to showcase various resources that we think you will find helpful.  Previous displays included our best books on study skills, and online resources recommended by the Learning Advocates.  Come and take a look to see what delights we have in store for the New Year!  You’ll find the display near the Library Helpdesk.

Children in Need

On 18th November we raised £100 for BBC Children in Need’s annual fundraiser by raising money through our staff sweepstake and donating fines. Pudsey was spotted all over the library waving hello.

Explore Archives

In November we also participated in and celebrated Explore Your Archive week, a campaign organised by the UK National Archives and the Archives and Records Association. We ran two handling sessions where selected objects were taken from the archives and displayed.  The history of each object was shared by the archivist Elisabeth. It was enlightening to find out more about our history and wonderful to share in the positive reactions and interest from staff and students at St George’s who attended.  The sessions were supported by a series of daily hashtags showcasing photos from our archives. We loved taking part in Explore Your Archives and learnt more about the fascinating history of St George’s’.

Christmas at St George’s

We end our blog with an original photograph from the archives showing St George’s Hospital at Hyde Park Corner at Christmas time in the mid-20th century.

In 2017 we are looking forward to working with all our users and the Students Union to continue to improve the study environment for everyone.

Replacement of furniture in Group Study Space

Over the Bank Holiday weekend we replaced the furniture in the Group Study Space (orange zone).  We have listened to your feedback about the new furniture, and have brought back some of the rectangular tables whilst we purchase more large round tables to improve this space and increase seating capacity.

The new round tables were put into the Library Group Study space, with the intention of creating more appropriate space for groups to study. This was following feedback from students in our recent survey.

Please use the silent study spaces (blue zone) at the back of the Library if you need more space or a quieter environment.

We welcome any comments and feedback, please email library@sgul.ac.uk

Added: 04 May 2016

St George’s Library in 2015

As 2015 draws to an end, we bring to you the highlights of this year for St George’s Library.

App Swaps

This year we started running  App Swap events. These are events where St George’s staff and students come together to share useful apps that are on the market as well as apps that have been created by staff and students themselves. Feedback for the events have been great, and we aim to run more in 2016.

Assignment Surgery

In March we started running Assignment Surgeries – 2 hour drop-ins where students can get help with their assignments including:

• finding useful articles
• managing references
• formatting documents in Word
• structuring essays

Students who attended found it very useful, and we already have Assignment Surgeries planned for March 2016.

Red Nose Day

Library staff dressed in red for Red Nose Day, and we donated all Library fines paid on that day and the following Monday raising £232.62 for Comic Relief.

New PCs in the Computer Rooms

In April the IT team installed all new PCs in the computer rooms. Then in August the main computer room was refurbished and we now have an extra bank of 10 PCs installed for you to use.

Freshers Fayre

Our freshers fayre competitions featured more prizes than ever this year – from our Blossom Tote Bags to delicious meals from Honest Burgers and ace stationary from the lovely people at K and K Stationers. And of course more prizes meant more winners – it took a little time, but all prizes have now been collected. Congratulations again to all the lucky winners, and thank you to everyone who took part!

DynaMed Plus

Made available to St George’s NHS Trust staff this year, DynaMed Plus an evidence-based knowledge system that helps clinicians make the right decisions at the point of care.

New resources for 2015 that are available to all St George’s staff and students include: Acland’s Video Atlas of Human Anatomy,  ASSIA (Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts), and the Mark Allen Healthcare Collection of Journals (which contains titles such as the Journal of Paramedic Practice and the British Journal of Nursing) available via SFX. Other new journals include Nature Methods and Nature Biotechnology. See our full list of new purchases for 2015.

Online resources can be accessed from our Databases list and Journals A-Z page.

Children in Need

Friday 13^th may be unlucky for some, but not it seems for Pudsey this November, thanks to Library users donating their outstanding fines and Library staff contributing to a staff sweepstake we raised £162.50 for the 2015 Children in Need appeal.

Extended Opening Hours

After popular trials of extended opening over exam periods earlier in the year, we were happy to launch extended opening hours in November seeing an increase to our weekday opening hours of almost 50%. In case you missed it, a reminder of our new opening hours:

• Monday -Friday 8am-6am
• Saturday – Sunday 9am-9pm

Full opening hours details available.

A busy December

While some things are winding down as the end of the year approaches, we are still busy busy busy this December.

We were happy to take part in St George’s Research Day to highlight the specialist services that we offer to support Researchers here at St George’s, in particular the work we do to support Open Access and Research Data Management.

We are busy reviewing all the feedback we have received through the Library Survey we ran in November. Thank you to everyone who took the time to give us their views and help improve the Library service.

One of our Library Christmas traditions is to support a charity in place of exchanging staff Christmas cards – this year we are donating to My Body Back a charity that Beth Jackson, currently our NHS Liaison Support Librarian, volunteers with. Find out how St George’s has also been involved in supporting their work in Beth’s blog post about their work.

Christmas Cake

We end our post with a photo of the lovely cake that Library staff member Louise made.
We hope you have a lovely break and look forward to 2016, one thing to keep an eye out for is our new monthly resources promotions, rumours are that there will be cupcakes involved for the January promotion…

 

A year at St George’s Library.

Another year has passed here at St George’s Library, so we thought it was a good chance to review just a few of the things we have been up to over the last year.

February

In late February the Library received the royal seal of approval when we were visited by HRH Princess Anne. A display of archive material relating to Edward Jenner and the discovery of the Smallpox vaccine was displayed. The Princess was also shown ‘Blossom’ in all her renovated glory.

March

To celebrate International Women’s Day the Library displayed archive material concerning the admittance of the Medical School’s first female students. A timeline Prezi was also produced using archive documents. Click below to have a look.

We were also able to raise £186 for Sports Relief with the help of students who donated their outstanding fines to this good cause.

April

Another VIP visited the Library in the person of the Mayor of London: Boris Johnson. He came to St George’s to look at the newly opened helipad but found time to pop into the Library. Blossom, as ever, was of great interest.

July

In July two members of the Library staff joined the St George’s Dragon Boat challenge team the ‘Part-Time Paddlers’. They joined the race at Kingston on Thames to raise money for the FamilyLine charity.

September

The central portions of the Library were refreshed. New carpets and lighting were installed and the seating and shelving was reconfigured to make the space more user friendly for quiet group study. We have had positive feedback and hope to be able to continue improving the space.

October

The Library held a competitive draw for students joining our Twitter or Facebook accounts. The prizes included Amazon vouchers, handy printing credits and delicious food from Honest Burgers. Congratulations again to our winners.

November

To commemorate the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War we published four brief articles concerning it’s impact on St George’s and the Healthcare Professions.

On a lighter note, with the help of Library users donating their fines to the Children in Need appeal we were able to raise a whopping £268. 35.

December

… is not quite over yet but we anticipate a glut of mince pies in the staff room.

 

Library Refresh

The Library has been reconfigured over the summer. With limited funds we focussed our efforts on improving the study space and creating an environment where students can work quietly in small groups. The carpet has been replaced, the lighting improved (we are still working on this in some areas), the furniture moved and the walls painted. We hope that we might be able to further improve this space for students with any future opportunities. We welcome your feedback via library@sgul.ac.uk

Thank you for your patience over the summer.

The Library Team
September 2014